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- The Joy of Text. With every day that goes by, I see increasingly fancy HTML emails in my inbox. My daily blog feeds are often extolling the virtues of the latest trend in design: horizontal scrolling, animated gra...
(03/11/10 09:01 AM)
- Tweet-Mapping Arrives, Along with the Twitter's Battle Against Google.
Twitter's geotagging powers could transform the lifecasting service into something extremely powerful. And the company's just taken the first steps to making this happen through its own Web page: It's turned on Tweet mapping.
Twitter's geolocation code has been enabled since late 2009, ready for third part developers to build the right hooks into their smartphone app code that grab the user's location from AGPS tech and whizz it off to Twitter HQ. But that's about all that happened for a while, until just recently the company slightly adjusted how it deals with a user's geotagging data--making it comply with a common standard, and enabling a layer of user decision-making as to how much location data is revealed to the World.
But now Twitter's added the system to its Web page, and has turned on a little blue-colored icon next to Tweets in your Tweet stream that come with associated geotagged data. Hover your mouse over the icon, and you'll be rewarded with a pop-up map that reveals where the Tweet originated from, leveraging Google Maps tech from the search giant's own location-based APIs. You'll also get Tweet maps for people who merely assign their Twitter account location to one near you, even if they've disabled per-Tweet location data, and that may make things a little confusing.
The net result is similar to the effect you can currently get via some of Twitter's numerous third-party apps, and even in the augmented reality Twitter360 app, or AR browser Layar--via plug-ins like Tweetaround--giving a very neat "who Tweeted nearby" video-overlay view of the world through the smartphone lens.
The company hasn't implemented any sort of "search nearby" system yet, however. This would really be the secret sauce that could turn Twitter into a powerful hyperlocal news-discovery or PR-promotional vehicle, much the same way that I've already speculated Google could go with its Buzz lifecasting system. And this is where Twitter's geo-tags raise some questions. Because Google's loving the Tweet feed, which is powering its real-time search systems rather nicely at the moment, even while it's launching Buzz as a sort-of-competitor to Twitter. And Twitter could be aiming for hyperlocal news and possibly targeted advertising...which is very much Google's game. It's even using Google's code for the location-based data on the Twitter Web page. Pulling all this together, and what you've got is two companies, each with valuable assets, gently maneuvering to try to steal bits of each other's territory, while simultaneously collaborating to deliver a neat real-time Web search facility to the public. How this plays out, nobody knows. But as Twitter slowly ramps up its location powers as it certainly looks like it will (perhaps next requiring users to opt-out of transmitting location data, rather than opt-in) then the Google/Twitter relationship is only going to get more complex.
[Via VentureBeat]
Follow me on Twitter, occasionally with geotag data bolted in, to hear more news like this.
(03/11/10 09:00 AM)
- Word of Mouth Versus Key Influencers.
Word of Mouth Versus Key Influencers
ShareWord of Mouth Versus Key InfluencersThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 This summary of an article [...] (03/11/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - How To Use Surprise To Generate Word Of Mouth.
How To Use Surprise To Generate Word Of Mouth
ShareHow To Use Surprise To Generate Word Of MouthThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Your customers [...] (03/11/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - The Soft White Underbelly of Referral Marketing.
The Soft White Underbelly of Referral Marketing
ShareThe Soft White Underbelly of Referral MarketingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Not that I want [...] (03/11/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - OK Go Ditches Label Over YouTube Embedding Rights.
How many times does a band have to take the music video world by storm before its record label gets that its members might know a little something about music videos? We may never find out, because OK Go, the band in question, has just ditched EMI, the record label in question, largely due to that very problem.
OK Go rocketed up through the indie rock world in large measure due to the band's brilliant, lo-fi music videos, which have spread like wildfire on YouTube. But EMI, in a misguided attempt to wring every penny out of the band's success, decided to block embedding on the YouTube videos--meaning the videos were unable to disseminate out through music and pop culture blogs, news sites, and personal blogs the way they did before the restriction. And that's not a minor detail: the band saw a 90% drop in views when that restriction went into effect. As in, 100,000 views one day, 10,000 views the next.
OK Go isn't a band with huge hit radio singles; they're a journeyman power pop act that puts out reliably excellent, not blockbuster, albums. Music videos are the band's way of making themselves buzzworthy, and it works: their homemade videos have achieved a level of popularity nobody could have predicted. So when the label makes their videos less popular, it means, in no uncertain terms, that less people out there know about OK Go, which means less people can buy albums and tickets for the hard-touring band's shows.
It's a ridiculous decision from the label, and the band was never shy about voicing discontent, even in the most public way possible. Singer Damian Kulash wrote an op-ed that appeared in The New York Times, a letter to his fans that appeared, among other places, in Gizmodo, and the issue came up in just about every interview the band gave. Now, the band has taken the final step: leaving EMI, and forming their own Paracadute Recordings label to release future (and a re-released version of the current Of the Blue Colour of the Sky) music.
[youtube qybUFnY7Y8w]
The very first change? The band's explosively popular (and completely mesmerizing) Rube Goldberg-gone-berserk "This Too Shall Pass" is now embeddable. And the band, which despite a Grammy award has never been a huge seller, is seeing results: since the videos have become embeddable, digital album sales tripled and digital tracks sales have jumped more than sevenfold.
In a press release from the band, Kulash makes it clear that the choice, if not the actual act, to split was an easy one:
"We'd like to thank the people who have worked so hard on our behalf," said OK Go singer Damian Kulash, who will discuss the band's departure from the label on NPR's "All Things Considered" today. "And we'd like to thank our fans for making this choice an easy one for us."It's not totally clear if this means every OK Go video will be made embeddable--EMI may still own the rights to those videos, so the famous treadmill video for "Here It Goes Again" as well as the band's other videos are still blocked from embedding. But at the very least, this means the next huge OK Go smash video will be open for all to see.
[OK Go]
(03/11/10 09:00 AM)
- It's Banks vs. Families, Who Will Come Out on Top? Q&A With Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren is Main Street's woman in Washington. A professor at Harvard Law School, she's researched the travails of the consumer credit market and the hidden bankruptcy epidemic for over 25 years. Not satisfied with merely publishing academic research, she leaped at an invitation from Senator Harry Reid to take a more public role in reforming the financial system after the credit crisis: She's now the chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the group charged with overseeing the bank bailouts.
I caught up with Elizabeth Warren at a table outside the Senate Office Building cafeteria, a few hours after she finished grilling Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit at a typically contentious hearing. With new financial reform legislation imminent--"You're talking to me in the 4th quarter of the basketball game," she said--Warren spoke frankly to Fast Company about her hopes, fears, and frustrations.
FC: You said it's the 4th quarter of the basketball game--what's the score?
EW: The economy has been pulled back from the abyss, and Secretary Paulson, Secretary Geithner, both presidential administrations and Congress deserve credit for that. They saved the life of the patient.
That said, the Treasury demonstrated that it was much better at shoveling hundreds of billions of direct grants and guarantees at the largest financial institutions than it was at protecting the real economy. The largest institutions were "too big to fail," but the foreclosure crisis and small business credit slowdown have been "too hard to solve."
FC: I was really struck by your interview last fall with Adam Davidson on NPR's Planet Money. (The shouting match drew hundreds of blog comments.) He seemed to suggest that protecting the real economy, as opposed to bailing out Wall Street, was some kind of marginal issue or a personal issue of yours. What do you think about that?
EW: I think the worldview that America begins and ends with its largest financial institutions is not only wrong-- it is dangerously wrong. Businesses are not America, and America does not exist to serve big institutions. America is about families. People who get up every day and earn their salary to pay their bills and try to make it one day to the next.
I am a bit stunned that, in the depth of the financial crisis, anyone is saying that the focus should be on the Wall Street banks.
FC: And yet it does seem sometimes that the business and economics news focuses on the fact that big banks are turning a profit again, or the stock market is back above 10,000, to the exclusion of foreclosures and unemployment and bankruptcies affecting Main Street.
EW: There's a larger point here about diversity of views. Are you familiar with The Wisdom of Crowds? The underlying insight is that a crowd must be drawn from different points of view to make good decisions. That's how it is that 1,000 people can guess with such accuracy the number of jellybeans in the glass jar. We were actually talking about this at lunch today: If all the people who are providing the input have the same worldview, then errors are built into the system. And those errors are not small. They are seismic errors.
You want the person who has a unique interest in defending the collapsing system as the person to oversee the bailout? That's astonishing!
FC: So let's leap into your role as an advocate for financial reform. The Senate's version of the financial reform bill already passed in the House and is due in the Senate any day now. Senator Dodd has been signaling potential compromises, like housing the Consumer Financial Protection Agency within the Federal Reserve instead of as an independent agency. Paul Krugman said in his column recently that unlike with health care reform, where progressives ought to grit their teeth and pass it, the time has come to actually stand up and say, this so-called financial reform isn't worth supporting. Understanding that final details aren't out yet, can you imagine a situation in which you'd say the same?
EW: Of course. There are already seven agencies in Washington that own a piece of the consumer financial protection apparatus. This is the worst of all possible worlds: a bloated, ineffective, unaccountable bureaucracy.
We need to merge those bureaucracies into a single, streamlined, accountable regulator with autonomy and teeth. If we fall short of that, we will just be recreating one more bureaucracy so that we can all congratulate ourselves that we did something for the American people when the reality is otherwise. That would be a terrible thing.
FC: What kind of assurances have you gotten from the Obama administration about their commitment to real reform?
EW: President Obama has been clear from the beginning that he supports a strong, independent consumer agency. He has put a lot of energy behind it. He has had events at the White House, has spoken about it in public town meetings, and even made the ultimate commitment--talked about it on Leno.
FC: I understand that at one point you pursued an entrepreneurial path to reform the consumer financial products market.
EW: The short version is that I studied the economics of the middle class and I began to see that credit products were becoming increasingly dangerous. Families didn't know how much they were spending on credit and comparison among the products was practically impossible because of all the incomprehensible fine print. It wasn't the products that were priced the best that survived. Instead, the ones that were most loaded with tricks and traps provided the most revenue.
So I thought at first that my academic research will be enough. I will publish a law review article and surely the world will change--that didn't happen. So I wrote a couple of popular books about it--The Two Income Trap and All Your Worth. But it still didn't change the world.
The PEW Charitable Trust then got in touch with me and asked what ideas I was working on. And I told them: I'd like to build a private, market-based solution. I want to build an Underwriter's Laboratory to certify credit cards.
The whole idea behind the current model is, "I will hold something shiny in front of your eye, 3.9% financing, and the way I'm going to make money is on tricks and traps that I've buried in the fine print: $29 there, $49 there, triple interest rate, double cycle billing, over and over and over ... ."
So the idea was to take an independent group that will say here's a clean, clear industry credit card. It was called the Clean Card. So Pew said, we love this. They took me out to San Francisco to meet with the head of a very fancy bank consulting group. We put together a proposal and many of the executives we met with just loved it.
They loved it at the first meeting and at the second meeting. It was almost as if you could see the CEOs thinking, "I'll have my picture on the cover of Business Week for transforming this market." They were saying, "We want to be part of this! We want to be the first movers, we want to be America's Credit Card." Then we come back for the 3rd meeting after the numbers guys have taken a closer look, and they say, "We can't do this." As one VP put it, if people really understood how much a credit card cost, they wouldn't use it and the bank would lose too much market share.
And one of the issuers took me aside and said, "We get that our business model is unsustainable over the long haul, but no one of us can jump first. We all have to move together. If we all move together, we'll be fine competitively, but if one of us moves and we lose market share, then the ones who issue the dirty cards will control this market." So it was literally on the plane on the way home from the meeting with the issuer that I realized how broken the market is and started thinking about a new agency in Washington.
FC: Ok, so you've concluded that the market is broken. Now you've come to DC and are working in the midst of biggest credit crisis the country's ever seen. What are you going to do if we finish out this crisis and still the market's not fixed?
EW: If America can't come out of the crisis and repair the broken consumer credit market, then this government really is broken. The lobbying over this bill is enormous, and it's all on one side. It's one thing when insurance companies are on one side and doctors on the other. This one is exclusively big Wall Street banks who have a tremendous amount of money to spend on this to protect their revenue stream.
FC: So even though you can call Vikram Pandit on the carpet and get him to answer a few questions, his lobbying staff is hard at work behind the scenes to make sure nothing changes.
EW: The money is all on one side and the votes are all on the other. So, that's what we'll find out. It's banks vs. families. And we'll see who comes out on top.
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cElizabeth Warrenwww.thedailyshow.com
(03/11/10 09:00 AM)
- MIT Media Lab Unwraps Its New Digs.
The building will now host MIT's most storied hothouse for interactive design innovation.
Last Friday, MIT opened the doors on it's newest big budget building, a spacious complex for the MIT Media Lab. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki Associates, with project architect Leers Weinzapfel Associates, it's a departure from some of the bold experiments scattered around the campus, by starchitects such as Steven Holl or Frank Gehry. It's a fairly straight-laced building, designed to inspire collaboration.
At six stories and 163,000 square feet, occupants shouldn't be squeezed for space anytime soon. The labs--ranging from the Tangible Media group, which focuses in interaction design; to the City Car project, which is designing on-demand transit systems; to Lifelong Kindergarten, which designs educational technology--each get big, wide-open, two-story studios. The architect dubs these "atelier style" spaces--that is, something as airy as a factory floor, but a bit more human scaled.
But the design's smartest features are quiet. The building is organized across a huge central atrium. But on either side of the atrium, the floors are offset. That simple detail means that denizens can look across the atrium, and see those from other labs, busy at work. The idea is that by making the community always visible, the architecture will be able to engender a cross-pollination of ideas. Here's a picture that hints at the effect, via Dwell:
Meanwhile, the few splashes of color are reserved for the atrium's staircases--and the specific color scheme is borrowed from Piet Mondrian. (It also nods to the colors in IM Pei's original MIT Media Lab building, which is attached to the new one.)
Notice how the stairs are bowed out in the middle--they're actually an infographic of sorts, showing the stress loads borne by each section of the span:
For more pictures and information, check out Dwell and CNET.
[Top two photos by Andy Ryan for MIT; bottom two by Tiffany Chu via Dwell]
(03/11/10 09:00 AM)
- Sony Announces PlayStation Move, Its Wii-Baiting Motion Controller.
Sony gave a brief tech demo of its motion controller at the E3 show last year (and discussed it with us just a few weeks ago), but a lot of the particulars were left unknown. Today, they demonstrated the newly-dubbed PlayStation Move, and released details about accessories, price, and release date. Sony's hoping the Move will attract buyers tempted by the Wii's motion-sensing gaming--but they've got a lot of ground to make up.
The basics are much like the Nintendo's motion controller, except instead of Wii's motion-sensing bar that sits on top of your TV, the PlayStation Move will use Sony's PlayStation Eye camera. Other than that, the Move is also a remote-control-like controller that can be attached to a side-controller for two-handed play. But whereas Nintendo's Wiimote had to be attached to its Nunchuck sub-controller, the Move connects wirelessly via a little lightbulb-shaped adapter (which, thankfully, looks more like a microphone than, well, something less savory). For some games, like a swordfighting game, you'll actually need two separate controllers--and everything, including the sub-controller, will almost certainly be sold individually.
The use of the PS Eye is interesting; it's definitely an advantage over the Wii's sensor bar, since it can use augmented reality to add graphics to whatever you're doing, onscreen. Instead of just pretending you're holding a tennis racquet, you can see yourself onscreen holding one, which is pretty cool.
But beyond augmented reality, it's not clear that Sony's doing much to dispel the notion that they're just releasing a Wiimote-like accessory. Compared to Microsoft's Project Natal for Xbox 360, which forgoes the controller entirely for a system that maps your body and can respond to individual limbs or even other objects, Sony's doing very little innovating here. Gizmodo tried out the Move and found that it's slightly more responsive than Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus, and of course the PS3 is a far more powerful console than the Wii, but that it was mostly underwhelming. We've seen this before--and a "me too" product may not be enough to drag Sony out of third place in the current-gen console wars.
The Move will be sold in a few configurations, including a standalone controller; a package with a PS Eye, Move controller, and a game; and a package with an Eye, Move, game, and a PS3 console. The only price we have for now is that the Eye, Move, and game combination will fall under $100. Sony is aiming for a fall 2010 launch window.
[youtube H9o9fRsK59c]
[Sony]
(03/11/10 09:00 AM)
- Infographic of the Day: The Best Jobs in America.
What jobs earn the most, and will be most plentiful, in the coming decade?
Recently, CNN.com produced a Top 100 list of the best jobs in America. And it wasn't particularly compelling until Focus.com put it in this infographic, which summarizes the results (click the link for full-size):
The most interesting data is in the parentheticals--in particular, the number of people actually employed in that job, which gives you some sense of how large the employment opportunity actually is:
But still, this could have all been way better: The data's drawn from the Bureau of Labor statistics, which also projects growth rates for each of the occupations in the study. (All of the jobs in the list have growth rates of at least 10%.)
BTW, we actually highlighted the aggregate growth rates here, in another IGOTD. But we're still waiting for the killer infographic that lets us know both what jobs are hot, plentiful, and fast-growing in a single, awesome IGOTD.
[Via Information About Information]
(03/11/10 09:00 AM)
- Why the End Times Might Reek of Methane.
What does a climate change "tipping point" look like? We may be about to find out first hand.
Carbon dioxide isn't the only greenhouse gas out there. Other substances, such as water vapor and nitrous oxide, also trap heat to varying degrees. Discussions about global warming focus on CO2 for a couple of key reasons: the first is that human activities have demonstrably increased carbon dioxide; the second is that the other gases tend to cycle out of the atmosphere pretty quickly. For the most part, unless there's a sudden, massive increase in the amount of the other greenhouse gases, we can safely focus on CO2.Well, guess what?
Scientists from Alaska's International Arctic Research Center, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Stockholm University have published an article in Science magazine indicating the discovery of a startlingly large amount of methane coming from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf--methane that was thought to be frozen, in the form of methane clathrates. How much methane? An amount equivalent to the total of methane coming from the rest of the world's oceans. The key paragraph, from the National Science Foundation press release:
They found that more than 80 percent of the deep water and more than 50 percent of surface water had methane levels more than eight times that of normal seawater. In some areas, the saturation levels reached more than 250 times that of background levels in the summer and 1,400 times higher in the winter. They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.Okay, it's a lot of methane... so what?
Methane--CH4--actually traps a significantly greater amount of heat than does CO2. The NSF article cites it as 30 times greater greenhouse impact than carbon dioxide, and I've seen references between 20x and 72x, depending upon how it's measured. Regardless, this is a big difference, and the amount of methane frozen under the Siberian permafrost can be measured in the millions of tons (up to 70 billion tons across the entire permafrost region). If the East Siberian methane melts, it would be akin to tripling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, raising temperatures around the world by 8-10° C, and arctic temperatures by 20° C by the end of this century. That would be very, very bad, like you-really-don't-want-to-go-there bad.
It turns out, in fact, that one of the biggest mass extinctions in Earth's history has been tied to a rapid methane clathrate melt.
You see, the East Siberian methane is fairly close to the surface; as temperatures rise, methane clathrates deeper down will start to melt, making temperatures go up faster, melting even deeper stores of methane ice, and so on. It's a runaway feedback loop--what some folks call the "clathrate gun." This whole process would take just a few decades. Melting methane clathrates are pretty much the scariest of the so-called "tipping point" effects of anthropogenic global warming. We don't need to burn every fossil fuel on the planet to make something awful happen, we just have to burn enough to start to thaw out methane ice, and natural processes take it from there.
There are two immediate questions we need to answer:
1) Does this study show us that there's a runaway methane event underway? The short answer is no. This is the first detailed study of methane concentrations in the region, so we don't know for sure whether the methane concentrations are increasing slowly, increasingly quickly, or not increasing at all. That the amount of methane is so disproportionate (and is higher than amounts found in ice core samples from thousands of years ago) suggests that something is happening, but in my expert opinion, it's not yet time to panic.
2) What can we do about it? It depends on how fast the methane clathrates are melting. If they're melting slowly, our best bet would be to do everything humanly possible to cut anthropogenic carbon emissions to zero. We have to avoid pushing the climate into a runaway methane tipping point; the faster we cut our carbon emissions, the better chance we have of avoiding this catastrophe.
If the methane clathrates are melting quickly, however, the story gets more complicated. Although we'd want to get to zero as quickly as we could, because of the carbon we've already put into the atmosphere--which keeps warming us--and because of ocean thermal inertia--the pace at which the ocean warms up and cools down--we'd still see another few decades of warming. Simply going to zero wouldn't be enough to avoid a methane runaway, if the clathrates are already melting quickly.
This is where the desperation moves come in. It's quite likely that, for many people, a clathrate melt would mean geoengineering goes from being a "Plan B" to "Plan Ohmygodyouhavetostartdoingthisnow." At the very least, we would need to step up the study of how temperature-management geoengineering would affect the overall environment, because there's a very good chance we'll want to use it.
We also would want to look at ways to remove the methane from the oceans and the atmosphere. I have a long post over at my main blog detailing what this would entail, but it's enough to say here that while it wouldn't be easy, it looks like it might be possible. This would have its own side-effects, too, of course... but probably not as bad as a mass extinction event.
The big lesson here is that the Earth's environment is a fantastically complex system, and changing one parameter--in this case, the temperature--can have effects far beyond what a simple straight line extrapolation would suggest. If we're lucky, follow-up studies will show that the methane emissions are either stable or only growing slowly, giving us enough time to upgrade how we live without having to do anything risky. But even if this is the case, good luck can't hold on forever.
(For more details on the effects of rapid methane melts, see this piece at Climate Progress, and this piece at Worldchanging.)
(03/10/10 09:00 PM)
- Giving Women Entrepreneurs a Boost. The glass ceiling still exists in old economy companies, but the new economy was supposed to open up new opportunities for women. Progress has been limited so far, but Women Equity for Growth, the first European investment program specialized in the financial and operational support of female-led ...
(03/10/10 09:00 PM)
- EA Sports Active 2.0 Will Measure Your Heartbeat, Share Your Data, and Work on Your iPhone.
Given the roaring success of Wii-exclusive EA Sports Active, the hardcore workout video that masquerades as a video game, a sequel was pretty much inevitable. Thankfully, this one's more Dark Knight than Electric Boogaloo.
The new, improved EA Sports Active will include a heartbeat monitor that straps around your arms and one of your thighs. But instead of just showing you how hard you're working--as if you need another numerical reminder while you're dripping in sweat--it senses your motions, and translates them into actions in the game. It's similar to Wii Sports, only you can use your whole body, not just a handheld remote, to jump and shoot hoops.
There's also an online hub, where you can store fitness data and download new workouts. You can also use the site to share workout progress with your friends--instead of, say, posting rapidfire updates on Twitter and Facebook about how many calories you've burned or miles you've run. (I'm happy for you. We're all happy for you. Now stop making me feel so lazy!)
EA Sports Active 2.0 hits stores this fall, with expanded versions for the PlayStation 3, iPod Touch, and iPhone. There's no word on how, exactly, the game's technology will integrate with the mobile platforms, but EA promises that it "will go with you wherever you are." Sounds awesome...and omnious.
[Via GamesBeat]
(03/10/10 09:00 PM)
- Smart Windows: Good for Seeing Through, Generating Electricity Too.
Photovoltaic solar power may be the bees knees in green power cleverness, but you still have to work out how to mount the panels on your building. That's going to be much easier now a Dutch company has combined them with windows.
PV panels aren't exactly the most attractive of household additions, in their typical "we just bolted these suckers onto your shingles" installation (though they are much more visually attractive than the solar heating units the come with the ugly cylindrical water tanks on the top.) There are fresh re-inventions that are tackling this problem, like the neat PV solar roof tiles, but they're not universally suitable.
Whereas every home has windows. And this fact has led Dutch company Peer+ to create Smart Energy Glass panels that generate current from the sun while also acting as like those old-fashioned devices that lets you see right through a wall. But that's not all. Similar to the other up-and-coming LCD glass treatments that let you blank a window at the flick of a switch (removing the need for curtains, blinds or shutters,) these smart windows also have selectable darkness. Darkest is the highest privacy mode, and thanks to a trick of the optics concerned, also leads to the most efficient power generation from solar input. And you can even choose between a range of shades for the glass and also incorporate logos or text into the panels, which will appeal to countless businesses.
But before you think I'm leaping at this invention over-enthusiastically, let me explain why it's important. The reason is a simple one: Style. Sure, you may lose some of the potential efficiency of this solar PV generation tech compared to specialist dedicated panels that are carefully aligned at the right angle to the average solar incidence direction for your home. But these things look good. And if green tech is to achieve serious adoption by the public (and architects too,) then design really has to play into things at some point. This solution, much like those solar tiles, is a neat way of leveraging this.
[Via Springwise.com]
(03/10/10 09:00 PM)
- Today in Most Innovative Companies.
News of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Apple, IBM, and Samsung.
Apple: If the iPhone's market share wasn't enough, even Steve Jobs' legal team is scaring away potential competitors now. Since Apple filed suit against HTC over alleged patent-infringment, analysts say that "top-tier smartphone makers" are now revising plans for mobile devices, out of fear of potential lawsuits and memorandum-spewing iPads.
IBM: More than 13 billion plastic bottles are disposed of each year, and while plastic is a big source of recycling, the material its made from is limited to "second generation reuse," meaning it can't be recycled repeatedly. Scientists at IBM and Stanford announced a breakthrough in green chemistry today though, pioneering a polymer that could create a new recycling process that would reduce waste. With every person in the U.S. disposing up to 63 pounds of plastic packaging annually, this discovery could go a long way toward reducing our carbon footprint.
Samsung: Electronics juggernaut Samsung started selling 3D televisions this week in the U.S. along with Panasonic. For just $3,000, you get a 46-inch TV, a 3D-compatible Blu-ray player, the eagerness of waiting months for Avatar's release, and a whopping two pairs of 3D shades, which really seals the deal if you ask me. Panasonic on the other hand is hawking the same Blu-ray player and a 50-inch plasma for $2,900--don't be fooled by that larger screen though, since Panasonic only includes ONE PAIR of 3D glasses, which apparently accounts for the hundred dollar price difference. Totally a deal breaker--I can't watch reruns of Sportscenter 3D on Saturday nights alone--that would be so lame! Could you?
(03/10/10 09:00 PM)
- Tom Dixon's Burlesque-Themed Circus: G'hed, Order the Strip!.
You've never really dined until you've dined next to a stripper pole.
Superstar designer Tom Dixon--whom we've covered frequently before--recently finished his newest interiors project, for a new restaurant in London called Circus.
Obviously, restaurants with a circus theme have been done over and over ago--there was the original Le Cirque, with monkey-drawings everywhere. And Aureole, in Las Vegas, features trapeze performers that fetch your wine. But where Le Cirque and Aureole are pure kitsch, Circus aims more for trust-fund cool-kids that wear Helmut Lang.
The building itself used to be housing for the animals performing for the Royal Opera House--a fact that Dixon and the Seven Dials restaurant group have used to inspire the design. Only this time, the performers are human: The wait staff does double duty, performing in cabaret acts.
Ergo, you'll notice the "Circus" theme referenced in the harlequin pattern on the wall below. And also the stairs attached to the long dining table, so that it can quickly become a stage:
Meanwhile, the lounge actually has a stripper pole:
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(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- 5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend.
5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to Recommend
Share5 Ways to Make Your Business Easier to RecommendThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 If I [...] (03/10/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Build Your Brand So People Will Refer You.
Build Your Brand So People Will Refer You
ShareBuild Your Brand So People Will Refer YouThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 As part of [...] (03/10/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Author of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral Week.
Author of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral Week
ShareAuthor of Book Yourself Solid Visits Referral WeekThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest podcast featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Marketing podcast with [...] (03/10/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Google Aims at Small Business Software Market, With Cloud-Connected Apps Store.
Google's up to its old tricks again, extending software tentacles in new directions to capture or subvert entire markets: This time it's aiming at business software by launching Google Apps Marketplace, which does clever cloud-connecting stuff.
Digging through Google's slightly obfuscating explanation in its blog post on the news, it seems that the App Marketplace has been conceived to make it super-easy for "Google Apps administrators" to find, enable, and distribute to their users all of the apps sitting in Google's cloud storefront. The word "efficiency" is used in there too, since Google's trying to point out that by having all of this stuff in one place, user's "daily workflows" in Gmail, Calendar, Contacts are streamlined, and the system lets everybody share data between the apps and each other for collaborative working.
There's the usual Google emphasis on open standards, meaning it's easy for app developers to quickly build hooks for your data into and out of other apps. And there's mention of the Google Apps userbase of some 25 million people, to tantalize and tempt developers to write more apps.
But what, when you get right down to it, is this all really about? It's actually quite subtle: Google's positioning itself as the conduit between Apps and small businesses, as well as being a workflow facilitator. In other words, a business may conduct its calendar planning or document creation using Google's standard tools--and if the business then needs a project management tool, it can access one via Google's market place and then hook it up to Google's core productivity software offerings, in one neat integrated swoop.
By doing this Google makes itself invaluable to a business, since it can basically offer almost any business management/creation tool that a company may need (assuming developers write an app for the task,) as well as placing it in the cloud for easy back-up and go-anywhere access. And we know that that's where Google likes to be--nestling right at the core of an operation, monitoring all the to-ings and fro-ings its users get up to, so it can then sell them highly targeted ads or new services.
[Via Googleblog]
To hear more news like this follow me on Twitter...which is a non-Google offering. For the moment.
(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- Zappos' New "Crank Yankers"-Style Ads Are a Shoe Win.
It's practically impossible to say anything bad about online retailer Zappos. They've got a sparkling customer service record, quirky corporate culture, let's not forget that $847 million check from Amazon, and now--for a company that probably doesn't even have to advertise--some of the funniest ads on TV.
Boston-based ad agency Mullen took a page from another genre of phone call-inspired hilarity, the Comedy Central show Crank Yankers, created by Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel. They used real audio from actual customer service calls, and enlisted puppeteer Randy Carfagno to create a cast of plush characters cheekily called the "Zappets." The director is Aaron Duffy, who you'll remember from that awwwwww-inducing Super Bowl spot for Google. More spots are on the way.
[@Zappos]
(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- The Freshwater Factory: A Bubble-Shaped Skyscraper That Desalinates Sea Water.
Why would you ever put a skyscraper in the countryside? In the case of Design Crew for Architecture's Freshwater Factory skyscraper, the idea actually makes sense. The skyscraper, designed for the 2010 eVolo skyscraper competition, isn't meant for human inhabitants. Instead, its series of bubbles are filled with water-filtering mangroves that desalinate seawater without using any electricity.
The system works with a series of circular tanks filled with brackish water. The water is pumped through the mangrove plants via tidal power, and is ultimately stored in freshwater tanks for later use. Design Crew for Architecture estimates that the tower could potentially produce 30,000 liters of fresh water daily.
Design Crew's system is indended for the Spanish province of Almeria--a fruit and vegetable heavy region.
The designers explain:
Any kind of fruits or vegetables can grow there at any time of the year. Sun does shine more than 2965 hours a year. Greenhouses fill more than 90% of the ground: that is why this area is nicknamed “the plastic sea”. Greenhouses spread over the landscape, undulating over the course of the hil hills. This is in this sunny and arid climate that our project is to be built. Our tower is design to produce freshwater to irrigate the cultivated lands standing at its feet.No word on if Design Crew actually plans to build its Freshwater Factory, but the design is just one of many innovative skyscrapers we've seen in eVolo's competition. Check out the rest here.
[Via Design Blog]
(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- Test-Drive Your Porsche Using Google Maps--But Watch Out for Cyclists.
Porsche has come up with a nifty little marketing campaign for its Cayenne models, using a couple of Google APIs. It's basically a virtual test-drive where you can plot yourself a nice little route--I plumped for the Golden Gate Bridge, followed by a spin in the Cumbrian Pennines, in the North of England--and sit back and enjoy the German carmaker's spiel about how its torque is second to none while dramatic music is piped through your speakers.
The two minute-or-so flash movie segues seamlessly (no doubt like the car's transmission) between Google Maps and pictures taken from Google's geolocation photo-sharing website, Panoramio. Porsche nerd will, I'm sure, appreciate that the video window measures 911 pixels across. It's fun, although, speaking as a cyclist, I'm waiting for the mash-up between this and the cycle routes that will soon be appearing on Google Maps. Billed as "the most requested addition to Google Maps," the routes will be available in 150 cities across the U.S. (I'm hoping they come to the U.K. more quickly than it might take me to cycle from NY to London.) The mash-up could be the goriest game ever invented.
[Porsche Via Panoramio Via Google Maps Mania]
(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- Do Improv Comedians Make the Best Design Thinkers? .
A teacher of design thinking at Dartmouth uses improv set-ups to boost his students' creativity.
Big design firms such as IDEO and Smart Design have made millions on their "design thinking" and "human-centered design process." Which is good for them, but doesn't necessarily teach you how to crib their mojo for your own endeavors. Peter Robie, an Engineering professor at Dartmouth, has an answer that would make Dunder Mifflin's Michael Scott: Copy improv comedy classes.
Apparently, in his Design Thinking course, Robie has students act out how people use the objects around them. It's a technique learned from experience. According to The Dartmouth Engineer:
"This class on improv is a tool for brainstorming," he explains. "I've always thought that the quickest and smartest folks at the brainstorming phase of design have been those who do standup and improv. They never say no. They never miss a beat. Improv requires players to accept what they are given, build on the ideas of others, and encourage wild ideas..." ..."Everyone thinks that they know how to brainstorm, but in fact, brainstorming is usually plagued by problems like self-censoring, competitiveness, and ridicule," says Robbie. "Improv is a great way for students to learn to defer judgment."Robie goes on to offer some pretty sharp nuggets about what human-centered design actually boils down to, and why it actually matters:
"In the period of scarcity after World War II in America, companies could essentially sell anything they could make because people were happy to have whatever they made," he says. "But since the explosion of competition globally, design has become the best way--or only way--that companies differentiate their products. It has developed into a key aspect of innovation and a requirement for success.... "...because "good designers are astute observers of human behavior," he sends students out in the field as anthropologists to notice, question, and analyze what they might otherwise ignore.If you're at all interested in design thinking, read the entire article. It's excellent.
[Via Core 77]
(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- Mapping Toronto's Sound Ecology: From Architecture to Santa Claus.
While the City of Toronto unveils a material-culture scrapbook of 176 years of history, designers Greg J. Smith and Max Ritts map what Toronto sounds like today.
Toronto just celebrated its 176th birthday by cleaning out its closet. The city gathered up 100 of the 150,000+ objects in its historical collection and put them online in an awesome, interactive, object-based scrapbook of Toronto's past called the Toronto Museum Project, designed by Ecentricarts with York University's Augmented Reality Lab. Each item gets both the curatorial treatment and, in a Storycorps-like touch, the memories of a local Torontonian it inspires. Plus, some of the objects are grouped into online exhibitions, organized around things like architecture and, uh, Santa Claus.
Lately, we've been telling a lot of stories about ourselves, and our history, based on our stuff. Over at the aptly-named Significant Objects, Joshua Glenn has been tracking the meme in advertising (figures: he wrote the book on it). Most notably, the BBC is in the midst of a two-million-year journey through our cluttered attic, telling the stories of choice items like Dolly the sheep, a guillotine, and a piece of the first trans-Atlantic cable. But we're more than our things, aren't we? Toronto is.
Consider Greg J. Smith and Max Ritts's just-launched Toronto Sound Ecology. It's pretty slim pickings so far, but imagine its scope: Smith and Ritts (and any number of local collaborators) plan to hike around their fair city, recording their treks as audio files, and linking them to an interactive map that you can browse and search. Click on a street, and you feel like you're there... with your eyes closed. It's sonic Street View. NY Soundmap's Sound Seeker was a similar effort in New York. Have you heard of others?
[Via Coudal]
(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- What Would You Ask Nature? Submit to the Biomimicry Institute/Designers Accord Challenge!.
Thanks to a smart TED talk by biologist Janine Beynus that made the rounds a few years ago, books like Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and new online resources like AskNature.org, more and more designers are realizing a simple truth when trying to find responsible, ecological solutions: If we're trying to do it, chances are, nature already did it better.
Biomimicry is quickly becoming a cornerstone of sustainable design (read our story on biomimicry from 2008), but for designers who want to incorporate biomimicry into their work, many don't know where to start. Some famous biomimetic solutions have gotten passed around the mainstream press--including examples like self-cleaning surfaces modeled on lotus flowers, or the sticky repositionable tape inspired by gecko feet--but biomimicry isn't as easy as using nature as a crib sheet. "One of the big realizations that designers have when they play with biomimicry is that it's not a tool, it's a mindset shift," says Dayna Baumeister, who co-founded the Biomimicry Guild with Benyus in 1998. "Because of that--because of the fundamentally different way of thinking--it's hard."
Biomimicry expert Janine Benyus' 2005 TED talk
Even for biologists, it requires a shift in thinking, says Baumeister, from learning about nature to learning from nature, including how each of those processes fit within a larger ecosystem. In a way, it's examining nature's solutions for survival, but through a design lens, says Chris Allen, project manager for AskNature.org. "You can look at brilliant engineering and strategies for living over thousands of years."
A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGEThe Biomimicry Guild has worked alongside companies to help them achieve that shift in thinking, from a longstanging relationship with flooring and finishes company Interface, to a team currently on-site at an architectural project in India, where they're creating buildings that not only are made from natural materials, they actually behave like natural organisms. Currently there's a great deal of excitement bridging algorithms found in nature and information technology or "generative design," where we're able to extrapolate data from the way that nature goes through its iterative design process in evolution.
A rainforest strategy in need of a real-life application: The bill of toco toucan acts as a heat exchanger to regulate body temperature by adjusting blood flowAnd, using biomimetic principles, we've also been able to learn more about our own species: The Biomimicry Guild is starting conversations with global companies that manufacturer things like cosmetics--in which case their own in-house scientiststs have been studying hair and skin for decades.
Because biomimicry experts believe that designers play an integral role in making sustainable, nature-inspired decisions in a project, they believe that's where their influence is best appropriated. A biologist working in biomimetic design is known as a Biologist at the Design Table, or, in a biomimetic-appropriate acronym: a BaDT. There are currently very few BaDTs--only about 75 worldwide--since they have to undergo extensive training. But eventually, the goal is to have a BaDT in every design firm who can help guide the designers towards smarter, more nature-influenced solutions--and that's where we come in.
A lightweight chair design inspired by spiderwebs, by Linda Dong as part of the Student Design Sketch ChallengeA REAL-WORLD BIOMIMICRY CHARRETTETo start a larger conversation between biologists, designers and businesses, we thought we could help by seating at least three BaDTs at three design tables of Designers Accord adopters across North America. We've tapped teams from three firms: Smart Design, New York; IDEO, Chicago and Boston; and Taller de Operaciones Ambientales, Mexico City. Each team will be paired with a Biomimicry Guild BaDT who will lead them through a two-day biomimicry design workshop as they work to solve a business problem, documenting their processes and reporting back to us in a little over a month with their bio-inspired solutions and how they got there.
Now all we need to complete the puzzle is your company's challenge! Do you have a real-life design problem that you just haven't been able to crack? Do you have a system, material, structure, process in your business that's seriously in need of innovation? Explain your problem as clearly as possible in the form below, including what limitations have prevented you from being able to achieve your goals in the past. If we think your challenge is a good match for one of the firms, we'll contact you for more information. Your company could be featured on FastCompany.com as "clients" for one of three biomimetic challenges, and receive a solution for your problem--courtesy of nature, of course.
If you have any questions, feel free to add them in the comments, and be sure to submit your challenge by 11:59pm PST, March 17, 2010. We'll see you back here in a little over a week with an update.
SUBMIT YOUR DESIGN CHALLENGE
If you have a design and sustainability story to share, let us know about it! Check out the brand new Designers Accord Web site. And follow us on Twitter @designersaccord to hear what the Designers Accord community is thinking about.
Browse more Designers Accord Case Studies
(03/10/10 09:00 AM)
- Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen.
Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t Happen
Why Word of Mouth Doesn’t HappenThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Sometimes, what you do is [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - 17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business).
17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business)
17 Terrific Tactics to Inspire Customer Love (and Get New Business)This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model.
Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model
Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business ModelThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Have you ever [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Is Google Local Search For Sale?.
Is Google Local Search For Sale?
ShareIs Google Local Search For Sale?This content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve always assumed that Google Maps (and other local search directories) would build up the free local directory, drive other for pay players out, get us hooked on their service, and then start charging to be listed in the prime spot. In this case the [...] (03/09/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Writing A Local Business Blog Can Be Instrumental In Your Success. Maintaining a local business blog has proven to be a very effective way to reach your audience. However, many small business owners believe that either they lack the time or ideas to adequately blog a...
(03/09/10 09:01 AM)
- Amazon's First Response to iPad Hype: A Better Browser for Kindle.
Amazon is slowly stirring itself into action by improving its Kindle e-reader, just as I suggested it ought to if it's going to compete with the iPad and other tablet PCs. The first move: Improving the shoddy Web-browsing experience on the device.
We know Amazon is working on this thanks to a job opening in the company's Kindle division Lab126 seeking an engineer to develop an "innovative embedded web browser." The engineer in question must have expertise in Java software development, experience working with Linux-based embedded devices, experience working with Browser Engines, and (score one for cross-platform compatibility) "familiarity with current web standards." The job will be to develop and implement new features on the browser, support and improve existing browser versions and all the back-office documentation issues that go behind software projects like this.
Three things can be inferred from this job posting. First, Amazon is aware its current "experimental" Kindle browser is an embarrassing piece of naffness that barely functions even for static Web pages (and fails at displaying fast-updating content thanks to e-ink's slow refresh rate). Second, that old browser on older Kindles will remain, indicating Amazon may not be updating it and instead crafting a new browser for a newer Kindle--perhaps with features like speedier-updating that can't be supported on older hardware. Finally, and this is speculative but exciting, Amazon may be pushing to get this new gear on the shelves sooner rather than later. This comes from the text asking the job applicant to deliver "high quality work on tight schedules," which is seen pretty commonly...but with such seemingly long development cycles for the previous Kindle editions, you have to wonder if a "tight schedule" means Kindle 3 is on its way pretty soon.
So, congratulations to Amazon for making the first move to turning Kindle into a seriously useful cross-purpose device: This is absolutely vital for the future success of the Kindle as a hardware platform. And before naysayers chime in with a "dedicated devices will always have a place. I love my Kindle!" I know... I know. But Joe Public is going to look at the Kindle, with its relatively high price and mono-purpose skills, and compare it to the iPad and the host of tablet PCs en route and think twice, particularly when you'll likely get a Kindle app for iPad. Amazon could, of course, call it a day on the hardware (since e-readers may have but a brief time in the limelight) and pursue a software-only model for Kindle. But it would seem keen to play in the hardware game for at least one generation more of Kindle.
To hear more news like this, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter. It may even work on your Kindle.
(03/09/10 09:01 AM)
- A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300%.
A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300%
A Simple Way to Increase Referrals 300%This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 I’m always amazed at [...] (03/09/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Goldman Sachs Slashes Nexus One Sales Forecast to Around 1 Million.
An analyst at Goldman Sachs has thrown a wrench into the works of Google's smartphone by downgrading the sales forecast of the Nexus One. Initial expectations were high: analysts had said as many as 3.5 million units would be sold in the first year. But with just 80,000 sold in the first month, according to mobile analytic group Flurry, figures have now been revised down to around a million.
Compare and contrast this with other handsets. The first iPhone took 74 days to hit a million in sales; version 2, in 2008, took just three days (by this time, however, it was available pretty much worldwide). The iPhone 3GS version hit 1.6 million within a week.
Moving away from Apple, which--let's face it--currently has the smartphone market all sewn up, how are other Android phones faring? Well the Droid, Motorola's last-ditch attempt to keep its head above water, flogged 525,000 through Verizon in the same month that the Nexus One was released.
And maybe this is what the first bona-fide Google phone needs: a network. It's interesting to note that, on the Nexus One website, the T-Mobile version ($179) is sold out, while the contract-free version ($529) is yours for the taking. There's no doubt that Google fluffed the launch back in January. There was a little bit of fluttery hype, but no announcements, no big fanfare, it was just unveiled, like any other product, around the time of CES, the tail-end of a bunch of Android OS upgrades. And then there was the customer service--or lack of it.
Goldman Sachs indulged in a bit of stern finger-wagging in its forecast note. "We assume that Google rolls out a second Nexus handset, markets it more agressively, and makes it available offline, and therefore forecast that Google sells two million handsets per year in 2011 and future years." If that's not a Must Try Harder report card, I don't know what is.
One gets the feeling that even Larry and Sergei are over the gPhone. Last week John Herlihy, Google's top guy in Europe, said that data mining was where the sexy jobs were at in Mountain View, although he took the view that smartphones were an essential tool for Google. Just not their own-brand ones, it seems.
[Via Electronista]
(03/09/10 09:01 AM)
- Design Award Upset: Small Chilean Studio Beats the Starchitects with Affordable Housing Project.
2010's Brit Insurance Design Award for Architecture went to Elemental's affordable, and adaptable, housing project in Mexico, skipping over big shots like Zaha Hadid and James Corner.
Architecture had its own Oscars on Monday, and just as cinephiles everywhere sighed with relief when The Hurt Locker beat out FernGully: Part 2, those following the Brit Insurance Design Awards cheered the triumph of the little guy. In a major upset, little-known Chilean studio Elemental beat big-budget showpieces like Zaha Hadid's MAXXI museum, Herzog and de Meuron's Tenerife Arts Space, and even the New York High Line, winning the architecture category with their Monterrey Housing Complex.
Built in Santa Catarina, Mexico, it was the studio's first project outside of Chile. The 70 connected homes were based on a similar housing complex they built in Iquique, Chile in 2004. This time, they had almost double the budget, but it was still next to nothing: about $20,000 per unit. So Elemental took a similar approach, building out half of each house, including the difficult parts like the bathroom and kitchen, and leaving the second half empty, to be constructed by the resident. It's cheap, clever, and instills an ownership in residents that fully-built -- but poorly-built -- housing projects lack. Plus, it's another sign that architecture is moving away from show and towards substance. It's a welcome, if overdue change.
See the rest of the winners in fashion, product design, furniture, graphics, transport, and interactive design here.
[via Architecture Lab]
(03/09/10 09:01 AM)
- Cleveland's Galleria Mall Turns Lost Retail Space Into Greenhouse Farm Stand.
Shopping malls, those bastions of American consumerism, have not been immune to the recent economic downturn. In a recent piece by our own Greg Lindsay, we looked at the impending decline of the mall, which is part of the "single-use environment" category of real estate development that will slowly disappear over the next thirty years, according to one developer. But what will replace these environments, and more importantly, what will happen to the massive malls of today?
One possible solution can be seen in Cleveland's Galleria mall. The mall lost many of its retail shops over the past few years, leaving gaping holes in the greenhouse-like space. So employees of the Galleria came up with the idea for the Gardens Under Glass project, a so-called urban ecovillage inside the mall that features carts of fruits and vegetables grown on-site. The project was recently given a $30,000 start-up grant from Cleveland's Civic Innovation Lab.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer explains:
Poole and Hamilton put in the first green stuff this week -- a 12-foot cart of lettuce and other greens near the Galleria's first-floor escalators. Their aim is to start an education center and store in a former candy shop, invite sustainable-product makers to display and sell their items, and sell produce to restaurants and individuals. They dream of hosting school groups and teams of volunteer urban gardeners eager to work beds of herbs and greens and vine systems raised hydroponically, aquaponically and in organic soils.We can see it now: the malls of today turned into the suburban (and urban) farming powerhouses of tomorrow. And while we're at it, why not turn entire economically depressed cities into agricultural centers as well? It's already happening in Detroit, where entrepreneurs are turning vacant lots into factory-side farms. And if Cleveland's mall farm works out, maybe New Jersey can become the next big agricultural innovator--the state has the most malls per square mile in the country.
[Via Cleveland Plain Dealer]
(03/09/10 09:01 AM)
- Eat-onomics: The Ten Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food.
Additional reporting/writing by Emilia Benton
The way America eats has to change, that's no secret. Thanks to the efforts of these ten trailblazers, that change might be closer than we think.
Dan Barber, executive chef and co-owner of Blue Hill FarmBarber is the brains behind the "Know thy Farmer" philosophy embraced at Blue Hill Farms. He was recently honored at the USA Network's Character Approved Awards for his achievements in "green" food cultivation and preparation. A passionate advocate for regional farm networks, Barber continues to practice what he preaches at his family owned farms, as well as with the nonprofit Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.
Deborah Kane, Vice President of Food and Farms at Ecotrust
Last month, Ecotrust began allowing Northwest food producers and buyers to utilize FoodHub, an online resource aimed to simplify their connections with each other and increase food trade in the Pacific Northwest. Kane continues to expound Ecotrust's mission to inspire fresh thinking that promotes social equity, economic opportunity and environmental well-being.
Mike Yohay, CEO of Cityscape FarmsYohay's Cityscape Farms continues to work to produce great-tasting fresh food for local buyers with its hydroponic greenhouses. "Hydroponic farming is incredibly innovative and resource economical compared to conventional farming. It's well-suited for cities because you can do it anywhere," says Yohay.
Gary Hirshberg, CEO, Stonyfield FarmIn the past 26 years, Hirshberg has taken his organic yogurt company and turned it into an organic yogurt empire worth $340 million. Stonyfield Farm doesn't just deliver high-quality food to consumers, but pays farmers 60-100% more than conventional farmers, to ensure the use of sustainable farming practices. What does he ask of his customers? "When you shop, you're really voting for the kind of world you want. It is power," he says. "We should use that power for good."
Roger Doiron, founder, Kitchen Gardeners International
Doiron can proudly take credit for bringing a garden to the lawn of the White House with Eat the View, a campaign that rallied Americans' desire to see a healthier First Family. "I knew this garden had been proposed in the past, and it had its champions--Alice Waters, Michael Pollan," he says. "I wasn't a rock star like them, but thought I could play the role of a roadie, making sure the mics are on and the amps are cranked up to make sure other people's voices were heard."
Jamie Oliver, chefThe Naked Chef is on a mission to bring healthy food to every child in America. His campaign, Jamie's Food Revolution, aims to replace junk food and processed snacks with fresh and nutritious meals, in school and at home. ABC will air a six-part series tracking the campaign as Oliver heads to Huntington, West Virginia, which has been called the unhealthiest city in America. If Oliver can make Huntington healthy, he might be able to make America healthy.
Melanie Cheng, founder, FarmsReach
San Francisco-based FarmsReach pairs farmers up with buyers for sustainable local food systems, with plans to be nationwide by 2011. "If you look at statistics, farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture are awesome, growing distribution methods, but they still make up less than 1% of food volume sold in the country," she says. "That's why we're working with the wholesale channel, for distributors and bigger institutions."
Michael Pollan, author, Food Rules
Pollan's latest book, Food Rules, offers memorable tips on making wise eating choices. Pollan, who has been described as the nation's most trusted resource for food-related issues, his new book is showing Americans that "eating doesn't have to be so complicated."
Dickson Despommier, Vertical Farms ProjectThe Vertical Farms Project is the brainchild of Despommier, a professor at Columbia, and his students. Envisioning a world of sustainable farms housed in urban skyscrapers, the project proposes paying traditional farmers to simply plant trees on their land, in an attempt to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Crazy? Maybe. But it's inspiring more thought, more solutions.
Robert Kenner, director, Food Inc.
Kenner's documentary Food Inc. did its fair share of grossing viewers out by exposing the heinous slaughter practices (and eating habits) found across our country. More importantly, the film, which showcased leaders like Hirshberg, showed that it is possible to eat healthy and enjoy it.
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
- Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week.
Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral Week
Author of Word of Mouth Marketing Visits Referral WeekThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 Marketing podcast [...] (03/08/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Save Detroit! One Inch, One Dollar at a Time.
Loveland is a real estate program to sell off some of Detroit's 40 square miles of vacant land for $1 per inch.
Detroit is shrinking. Coming in just under a million in the 2000 census (the first time its population had dropped that low since the '20s), Detroit is now down another 150,000 or more. Foreclosed or otherwise abandoned homes are everywhere, some more prominently than others--consider the Ice House, or Detroit Demolition Disneyland. Mayor Dave Bing is shuttering city departments and bulldozing vacant buildings (hopefully not Michigan Central Station, which bravely faces its own uncertain future, an empty shell of its former self). Detroit has 40 square miles of empty land.
What to do? Well, you could farm it, like John Hantz is proposing. But as Greg Lindsay pointed out here, that might not be the best idea: "With 95% of its remaining buildings still inhabitable, inner-city Detroit should at least be an urban Petri dish."
It should be, it can be, and it is. Design99 and Motor City boosters like Toby Barlow are advocating saving those houses--and the city--by buying them up cheap (super cheap) and fixing them into homes for artists, locals, or transplants.
Then there's Loveland, Jerry Paffendorf's "wild social network of people, literally built out of the dirt." Paffendorf bought a vacant lot for $500 and sold it, an inch at a time for $1 per inch, to almost 600 "inchvestors" around the world. It's called Plymouth (pictured above).
Now, Loveland is in phase 2. Paffendorf doesn't have a new lot to sell, so he's selling so-called "ghost inches" in order to raise money to fund any number of as-yet unspecified, but sure to be... uh... interesting projects on-line and throughout the city. You can inchvest through kickstarter here.
[Via NPR]
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
- The Home Office, Kids Edition.
Kids and offices don't mix, right? Tempting though it would be to take a leaf out of Apple's book and employ my young charges--open up a blogging sweatshop, if you like--I think I'd be on the fast track to nowhere--I'd get sacked after the seventeenth pitch of Why Haribo Gummi Bears are So Grate.
One of the most startling thing about having children around--and if you're working from home, they will be around at some point--is how much of an influence you are on them. I don't have children of my own, but my boyfriend has two--a 10-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, but more on them in a bit. And, in the year or so I've been around them, I've realized just how much they try and emulate what you do. So, they see you putting your make-up on to go out and before you know it, that gorgeous blond cherub who just sat down with a plate of fish fingers has made herself up to look like David Bowie in his Aladdin Sane period. They see you tapping away at a computer, they'll want to do it too. Which is a good thing--a great thing, actually, as there will come a time when they're able to sort out your IT woes and download all the latest Lawnmower Metal bands for you to listen to. The downside, however, is that they want, in the immortal words of Rob Reiner's mother in When Harry Met Sally, what you're having. And if that's a slice of your computer, then that's what they'll get.
Anyway, back to my sorta stepkids. The eldest, Charlie, is an absolute whizz on the computer, so much so that every time he comes to stay he eyes up my iMac in a way comparable to how I imagine Hugh Hefner would behave on a visit to a sorority house at Gothenburg University. This has had two effects on our relationship. First of all, he has bonded with me in the only way that a 10-year-old geek (two in binary years) might. My shiny little computer is the holy grail of the household and, in the initial period of our relationship, became the center of a tug-of-love. He saw it as something to watch Doctor Who on, before he discovered the joys of e-commerce. "Can I have your credit card number?" was, I believe, the first sentence he directed at me.
I, however, see my computer somewhat differently. For starters, it's the one thing in my house that enables me to earn a crust, so to say I am territorial about it is something of an understatement. Friends' toddlers have either vandalized or permanently knocked out of action the various decorative objects I've collected on my travels. A much-loved Seventies globe light I picked up in a junk shop in Berlin was smashed to smithereens at Christmas by a one-year-old, and you just have to shrug your shoulders, usher the kids out of the way of the shards of glass and get the Hoover out. But to knock my computer out of action would render me pretty useless.So, here are my seven golden survival tips.
1. Earmark another computer for the kids to use. Given that the shelf life of a computer is, say three to five years (let's not forget those awfully persuasive marketing campaigns exhorting us to upgrade to a newer model), there's probably a good chance that there's an unused laptop kicking around the house. Failing that, ask your friends if you can take an unwanted laptop off their hands. Wipe everything off but the bare minimum, and hand it over to the kids. That's their computer for them to do whatever they want on it--well, within reason. Understand about firewalls. Don't, however, make the mistake of putting an old desktop in their bedrooms. Call me old-fashioned, call me a killjoy, I don't care. Just don't do it, unless, of course, you want your kid to act like he's got ADHD, as that's what sleep deprivation does to them.
2. Close the door. If your home office has a door on it, then you're laughing. If it's got a doorframe, then you're halfway there. Introduce rules. Door open? Come on in. Door closed. Back off unless it's really important. You may want to consider getting a lock on the door--which works both ways, keeping you in and them out.
3. Introduce strict times about when they can and can't use your computer. If you green light your computer for your kids' use, then there are a few things you should do. Give them a separate log-in and make it clear that they can't use your settings. That way they can't go in and wreak havoc with your desktop. No food or drink to be consumed around your computer. It may anger the wildlife. (That's you.) Make it clear that you have first dibs on the computer. If you need to use it, then they're off. Make sure your Google settings are on Safe.
4. Keep them away from your most pristine (but hopefully not your only) laptop. My colleague Kit's MacBook Air suffered a severe malfunction when his son mistook it for a trampoline.
5. Manage time. Having kids around forces you to be much more diligent about working to a timetable. Most of my work is done in office hours, but there are occasions when I have to work late. And that's hard if you've got kids. Either you down tools until they're in bed (which means you're stuck at your desk until your brain resembles mashed pumpkin) or you ask them if you can have an hour between when they get back from school and supper to work. If they've got homework, then that's the time for them to do it. Tidy away your paperwork before they get home. Important phone calls are done either when they're napping or out of the house.
6. Back up everything. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Back it up. With kids, accidents do happen, so, should the unthinkable happen and your work be sucked into a vortex of nothingness, then at least you've got a copy. It wasn't their fault, they were just trying to be like you. And if they go the trampoline route, then a decent home insurance policy can help. If you're a Machead like me, then it's worth paying a little bit extra for Applecare, which gives you three years' cover on your Apple products. I've had free batteries, new keyboards--and, in one case, a new casing around my laptop trackpad. It's saved me thousands.
7. Give them an even bigger screen. Get a pile of DVDs and sit 'em in front of the telly. And buy yourself a pair of noise-reducing headphones. And if that fails, bribe them with Gummi Bears.
[Images: deryckh (top image); Kit Eaton (baby)]
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
- Cell-Phone Tech Uses Accelerometer to Spy on Employees.
Just occasionally, a bit of gear comes out that makes you wonder just whose side technology is on. And none more than this cell-phone idea from the R&D geeks at KDDI Corporation, one of Japan's biggest cell-phone makers. Spyware by any other name, the technology will enable bosses to use the accelerometer on their employees' phones to check up on whether they're working or not.
The idea is simple: software is embedded into an employee's mobile that is connected to a server that analyzes their movements via the phone's accelerometer. At first, workers will have to input just what action they are performing into their mobiles so that their movements can be interpreted. The system becomes more accurate as time goes on, recognizing each individual's movements. So, if your boss has asked you to hoover up the nasal hair he clipped before nipping off to lunch with his secretary, he can make sure that you're performing the task he's set you, rather than sitting in front of his computer and checking up on your Facebook page--or his.
The press release has a rather quaint term for it--"making central monitoring possible with workers at several different locations." I have another term for it, but sadly it's not repeatable here.
[Via Asiajin]
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
- Google Really Wants to Monitor Where You Are: May Link Buzz and Latitude.
Google's Buzz has hit the tech headlines in good and bad ways, but it's totally swamped other Google offerings like Latitude. Google's not forgotten it of course, and has revealed it may well intertwine Buzz with Latitude. LBS social networking FTW?
Google's mobile Buzz implementation has a location-based system built right in, which grabs your geocoordinates from the smartphone's AGPS system, whizzes it off to Google's cloud, and then drives location-sensitive data back to the app in the form of location aware Buzzes in the "nearby" view. As I noted before, this tech has the capacity to turn into something rather incredible (and slightly creepily unnerving) should Google take the concept to its natural extremes.
But Google has another location-aware social network already, and has had since February 2009--Latitude. Google's not deprecating Latitude, since it's based around slightly different systems, and is more of a location-based friend discovery system as opposed to a chat-based social networking system. Still, many of Latitude's features are emulated, or improved upon (or can be in the near future) inside Buzz. And that's why Google is noting, in an interview with eWeek, that while it's going to continue investing in Latitude since it's "extremely important," it's conscious of the public buzz about Buzz, and will be investigating "points of integration between Buzz and Latitude." In particular, there may be apps Google can "build that have certain compelling use cases" which may be enhanced by location-awareness.
This is fluffy, question-deflecting business talk, and it reminds us that Google truly is a giant organization pushing out innovative solutions in a thousand different directions all at once--sometimes without really thinking about the cross-product potential. But a liaison between Buzz and Latitude really does seem a smart idea, since the potential to enhance a friend-locator app with a sophisticated chat/info-sharing system has obvious benefits for the end users too.
And, don't forget the real motivator behind this idea: Money. Google's skills at profiling you as a user are legendary, and sometimes worrisome, and there would clearly be a huge new array of attributes it could calculate about your habits if it integrated the always-on location sensitivity of Latitude with the info-rich chat streams inside Buzz. And then it can use that data to sell ad space to interested parties who'd like to advertise stuff to you based on your location, or when visiting certain places or talking about them with your pals.
[Via eWeek]
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
- Latte for Work? Cappuccino-Powered Car Puts You in the Espresso Lane.
Forget the electric vehicle revolution--this car is juiced up by the same stuff that powers you in the morning. The "Carpuccino" car was built by a team from the BBC science show Bang Goes The Theory to prove the viability of cars powered by fuels other than conventional gasoline and diesel. The car, built from a converted 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco, was used by the show because it looks like the DeLorean from Back to the Future.
The idea of making biofuel from waste coffee grounds is nothing new, but the Carpuccino allows drivers to pour coffee granules directly into a gas cylinder attached to the car, where it is heated up and broken down into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. But despite its convenience, the Carpuccino isn't exactly practical--during a planned 210 mile trip between Manchester and London, the vehicle will use 70 kilos of ground coffee at a rate of three miles per kilo of ground coffee, or approximately 56 espressos per mile. The UK Daily Mail estimates that "at supermarket prices of between £13 and £26 a kilo depending on brand and quality, [the trip] will cost between £910 and £1,820, or between 25 and 50 times the £36 cost of petrol for the journey." That means it's actually much cheaper to stick with regular gasoline ... in your car, we mean.
So will we all drive coffee-powered cars sometime in the near future? Probably not. But the Carpuccino serves to remind us that making vehicles sustainable sometimes requires more than a little creativity. Chevy can have its Volt. Give us the Jolt.
[Via UK Daily Mail]
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
- Adventures in Virality: Jay-Z Spoof "Entrepreneur State of Mind" Namechecks Notable Blogs, Us .
Where's Weird Al when you need him? The curly locked spoofmeister could have hit Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" out of the park, but instead, we're being treated to "The New Dork: Entrepreneur State of Mind."
It's a blatant bid at a viral video from Pantless Knights, the makers of the popular "Mac or PC" rap. A dreadlock bedecked singer in skinny jeans smooshes together a maelstrom of tech and entrepreneurship buzzwords with notable names and spits hot gems like this one: "I'm the new Zuckerberg, and since my Web site I've been cookin' dough like a chef servin' kilobytes." When the chorus rolls around, the tubed-topped, code wonk's version of a video vixen sings and plays the Keys.
Photos of Steve Wozniak, Kevin Rose, and Reid Hoffman scurry through the background while our square emcee namedrops Valleywag, Geekologie, TechCrunch, Mashable, and Gizmodo. At the 2:05 minute mark he sings "startin' big trends with the tweets that I pass on / you should follow me cause I'm friends with Ashton," as he wags around his copy of Fast Company's Dec/Jan issue.
Mission accomplished, son.
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
- iPhone Players: Prepare to Frag PC and Console Gamers.
The Apple-vs.-PC war is about to get literal. Bigpoint and Unity Technologies are demonstrating at the Game Developers Conference a new version of the Unity browser-based software, which will now allow iPhone gamers to play against PC players.
The companies presented today a racing game demo, named "Uniter," demonstrating the technology. "This is our vision of the gaming industry in the future, independent of the platforms. Just imagine your friends are sitting around in the office or the university, and you turn on your iPhone and race against them--everything in realtime and 3-D," said Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz. The software supports up to 16 players. It also allows a single user to start a game on one platform and continue it on another--similar to what Microsoft demoed for Windows Phone 7.
And the future of the software? An iPad version is in the works, developers said. They are also working on Unity for Android. "The technology we are using isn't working on Android, but we expect it to in the next two to three months," Hubertz told FastCompany.com. And what about consoles? "It's in our plan. The technology we are using we can actually bring to the PlayStation 3 and the Wii at the moment, so we'll see. It's not our main focus, but we will see what we will do at the end of this year."
Bigpoint is a Germany-based publisher of online games with over 100 million users worldwide, and it just opened an American branch in San Francisco. Unity Technologies makes software for browser-based games, including games for Cartoon Network, LEGO, and Electronic Arts.
What does this all mean? A multi-platform LEGO Universe? A new Cartoon Network MMO everywhere? Stay tuned.
(03/08/10 09:00 PM)
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- The Referral Multiplier Effect.
The Referral Multiplier Effect
The Referral Multiplier EffectThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses – check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010 After I read an early copy of [...] (03/08/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - It Is Make a Referral Week!.
It Is Make a Referral Week!
It Is Make a Referral Week!This content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve declared this week, March 8-12, Make a Referral Week with the intent of drawing attention to the act of making referrals rather than simply receiving them. In fact, I have set a goal to challenge 1000 businesses, large and small, to make 1000 referrals [...] (03/08/10 09:00 AM)
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- How to Create a Blog For Your Business - Quickly & Easily!. For the last couple of years, blogging has been all the rage online. But did you know that a blog is just a type of website that is updated periodically, with the most recent content on the top of the...
(03/06/10 09:01 AM)
- Weekend Favs March Six.
Weekend Favs March Six
Weekend Favs March SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I have a weekend routine where I share a handful of favorite things I tripped upon online this week. I usually about three and don’t go into much detail but suggest you check them out. The image featured in the post is a favorite creative commons image [...] (03/06/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - .
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- Blog Marketing: Be Seen!. Having a blog and making it known to cyber world is not as easy as it may seem. Many people think that they can write it or build it and they will come. This is not the case at all. Just because you p...
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- Mining Twitter with Google Turns Up Some Interesting Stuff.
Mining Twitter with Google Turns Up Some Interesting Stuff
Mining Twitter with Google Turns Up Some Interesting StuffThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing As a marketing tool the Twitterverse gets so much more useful when you can filter out all the noise and drill down to people and communities that might very much want to know what you’ve got to offer. A bit of bloom has [...] (03/04/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-Team.
Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-Team
Building Your Referral Engine – Free Webinar with the Referral A-TeamThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing As part of the Make a Referral Week 2010 Education Series I am highlighting the power of referrals and word of mouth marketing with a live event featuring the some of the brightest authors, speakers and thought leaders on the [...] (03/04/10 09:01 AM)
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- Making Your Google Alerts Smarter.
Making Your Google Alerts Smarter
ShareMaking Your Google Alerts SmarterThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing If you follow my writing you know that I’m a big fan of setting up routines that let you listen in on what’s being said about your brands, products, people, industry and competitors using free tools like Google Alerts. Google Alerts let you set-up custom searches [...] (03/03/10 09:00 AM)
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- Would You Like to Know How To Teach Your Business to Market Itself?.
Would You Like to Know How To Teach Your Business to Market Itself?
ShareWould You Like to Know How To Teach Your Business to Market Itself?This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Hope you can join me for a free webinar Wednesday March 3rd at 1pm CST as I reveal through the use of The Marketing Hourglasssm the logical progression that takes your customer from know to refer. Nail all [...] (03/02/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - What’s on the Back of Your Napkin?.
What’s on the Back of Your Napkin?
ShareWhat’s on the Back of Your Napkin?This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Dan Roam (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin, thinks that any problem can be solved with a picture. And that anybody can draw [...] (03/02/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Profiling Green Moms: What Marketers Need to Know. We are in a perfect storm brought on by the economic downturn, emerging consumer interest in sustainability, and the power of social media. And whether for reasons of cost savings or family health, women who are moms, write blogs, and self-identify as "green" have exactly the motivation and conviction marketers ...
(03/02/10 09:00 AM)
- Local Review Success Hits Speed Bump.
Local Review Success Hits Speed Bump
ShareLocal Review Success Hits Speed BumpThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing You know I’m a supporter of the local review sites like Yelp! and City Search, but some small business owners have issues with the format. Here’s the dilemma, consumers do seem to like them because they offer an easy way to get some input on [...] (03/01/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Rockabilly Salon Stands Out.
Rockabilly Salon Stands Out
ShareRockabilly Salon Stands OutThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing The idea of differentiation and standing out in whatever industry you are in is such an important concept that I take the opportunity to write about it frequently. The key is to find something that makes it very easy for people to see you’re doing something different [...] (03/01/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Weekend Favs February Twenty Seven.
Weekend Favs February Twenty Seven
ShareWeekend Favs February Twenty SevenThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I have a weekend routine where I share a handful of favorite things I tripped upon online this week. I usually about three and don’t go into much detail but suggest you check them out. The image featured in the post is a favorite creative commons [...] (03/01/10 09:00 AM)
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- This Week’s Links.
Private industry in the US funds the biggest innovation machine in the world. (via rtable.net) The new rules of short selling, explained. The Wall Street Journal has a list of 10 Wall Street blogs you need to read. This isn't something... Read more
(02/26/10 09:00 PM) - Industry Buzz & News: 02/26/10. Measurement & Analytics:
Microsoft and comScore partner to update old-school planning metrics.
Weblog Marketing:
5 tactics to promote a business blog.
Ad Technologies:
Tremor gets real-time.
5...
(02/26/10 09:00 PM)
- Intrapreneur’s 10 Commandments.
If you find yourself in a big company, you can still be “intrapreneurial” — a term that refers to entrepreneurial activities in an otherwise non-entrepreneurial environment.
In his blog, Ben Casnocha talks about the 10 Commandments for Intrapreneurs.
1. Come to work each day willing to be fired.
2. Circumvent any orders aimed at stopping your dream.
3. [...]
(02/25/10 09:00 PM)
- Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine.
Making Referrals As a Job Creation Engine
ShareMaking Referrals As a Job Creation EngineThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Following on the success of last year’s Make A Referral Week I am calling out to small businesses once again to stimulate the economy and create jobs through the act of referrals. During the week of March 8-12, I am challenging my readers to [...] (02/25/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Made to Switch with Chip Heath.
Made to Switch with Chip Heath
ShareMade to Switch with Chip HeathThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Chip Heath (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download) – Subscribe now via iTunes Hopefully you recognize the title of this post as a play on Chip and Dan Heath’s wildly popular book Made to Stick and the recently [...] (02/24/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media Marketing.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media Marketing
ShareThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media MarketingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Back in high school I had a great English teacher (I may not have left him with that impression at the time) that was very into science fiction. He made us read Robert A. Heinlein and all 1200 pages of Atlas Shrugged, but I [...] (02/23/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - 7 Steps to Powerful Online Seminars.
7 Steps to Powerful Online Seminars
Share7 Steps to Powerful Online SeminarsThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing For many businesses, particularly service oriented businesses, getting up in front of a group of prospects with the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise is one of the best lead conversion opportunities going. Holding workshops and seminars live and in person has long been [...] (02/22/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Weekend Favs February Twenty.
Weekend Favs February Twenty
ShareWeekend Favs February TwentyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I have a weekend routine where I share a handful of favorite things I tripped upon online this week. I usually about three and don’t go into much detail but suggest you check them out. The image featured in the post is a favorite creative commons image [...] (02/20/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Microsoft Outlook 2010 Will Make Social Media Mainstream.
Microsoft Outlook 2010 Will Make Social Media Mainstream
ShareMicrosoft Outlook 2010 Will Make Social Media MainstreamThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing For many readers of this blog social media is mainstream, but I travel the highways and byways of this country and experience first hand in my workshops and presentations the amount of folks that “just don’t get” social media. I think they’ve heard [...] (02/19/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - 5 Steps to Successful Facebook Advertising.
5 Steps to Successful Facebook Advertising
Share5 Steps to Successful Facebook AdvertisingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Currently Facebook boasts somewhere in excess of 400 million users and growing. You’ve probably heard this line by now, but If it were a country it would be the third largest in the world behind China and India only. There’s a pretty good bet that [...] (02/18/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Join the Mobile Webinar Win an HP iPAQ Glisten.
Join the Mobile Webinar Win an HP iPAQ Glisten
Join the Mobile Webinar Win an HP iPAQ GlistenThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Join me for a free web panel discussion – Mobile Marketing for Small Business – February 18th at Noon CST – Register here for Feb 18 Mobile Marketing Event As mobile devices evolve to powerful hand held computers, smart marketers are embracing [...] (02/17/10 09:01 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Guest Post: 4 Easy Blogging Tips for Beginners.
This is a guest post by Stephanie Sims of ACTIONCoach. Blogs are gaining more and more traction as a legitimate marketing tool for small business owners. They are far-reaching, cheap to produce and easy to maintain. Though not a substitute for... Read more
(02/17/10 09:01 PM) - Your Business Is Worthless if It Depends on You.
Your Business Is Worthless if It Depends on You
ShareYour Business Is Worthless if It Depends on YouThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with John Warrillow (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes The title of this post might sound like fighting words for some, I mean, you work and sweat and pour your life into [...] (02/16/10 09:01 PM)
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- 3 Ways to Use the Google Wonder Wheel for Visiual SEO.
3 Ways to Use the Google Wonder Wheel for Visiual SEO
Share3 Ways to Use the Google Wonder Wheel for Visiual SEOThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Google has a tool buried deep into the core search functionality that doesn’t get talked about much. The tool is called the Wonder wheel. Essentially, it’s just another way to view your search results but it focuses on creating a [...] (02/11/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Free Live Training Mobile Marketing for Small Business.
Free Live Training Mobile Marketing for Small Business
ShareFree Live Training Mobile Marketing for Small BusinessThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing You know mobile is the hottest marketing tactic going right now. Maybe you don’t feel it yet, maybe you’re not sure if it’s really time to get on board or not. Join me for a free web panel discussion – Mobile Marketing [...] (02/11/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - PR is Only Dying If It Isn’t Evolving.
PR is Only Dying If It Isn’t Evolving
SharePR is Only Dying If It Isn’t EvolvingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Brian Solis (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I asked Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks and co-author of Putting the Public Back in [...] (02/09/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Gizelle Fashion Content vs. Textbroker.com. Every Internet marketer knows they need fresh and unique content to get targeted traffic. This content can be used on article directories, forums, blogs, etc. Today, we will review two of the top lead...
(02/09/10 09:01 AM)
- 5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer.
5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer
Share5 Questions You Should Ask Every CustomerThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Constantly seeking feedback from your customers is a great way to learn how to market your business more effectively. If you’ve never done this before, do it immediately as it is one of the best ways to discover what you do that actually differentiates [...] (02/08/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Weekend Favs February Six.
Weekend Favs February Six
ShareWeekend Favs February SixThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here [...] (02/06/10 09:01 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Extending Your Presentations Through the Backchannel.
Extending Your Presentations Through the Backchannel
ShareExtending Your Presentations Through the BackchannelThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing The term “backchannel” was coined in the field of Linguistics in the 1970’s to describe listeners’ behaviors during verbal communication. It is commonly used these days to describe the behavior or conversation going on in social media while a speaker is making a presentation. In [...] (02/05/10 09:01 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Analytics from a Really Smart Guy.
Analytics from a Really Smart Guy
Analytics from a Really Smart GuyThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Avinash Kaushik (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 is one of those rare people who can take a somewhat dry and mathlike subject of web analytics [...] (02/04/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Right and Wrong of PR Pitches.
Right and Wrong of PR Pitches
ShareRight and Wrong of PR PitchesThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing For years I was on the pitching end of PR and, while I still do some for my own promotion, I am more often on the receiving end of pitches these days. It’s probably foolish to suggest there is one right way and one wrong way [...] (02/04/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - Social Media Infecting Every Aspect of Business.
Social Media Infecting Every Aspect of Business
ShareSocial Media Infecting Every Aspect of BusinessThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing For this week’s post at AMEX OPENForum I outlined 5 Ways That Sales People Can Benefit From Using Social Media Social media tools are incredible for engagement, amplification, nurturing and deepening relationships – all the stuff that sales is supposed to do. In fact, [...] (02/03/10 09:00 PM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - The Single Greatest Way To Discover Innovation.
The Single Greatest Way To Discover Innovation
ShareThe Single Greatest Way To Discover InnovationThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Warning: I have no scientific research to back up the theory I’m about to ponder, but I would love to hear your thoughts after/if you complete reading this post. I don’t really recall the first time I discovered this, but it’s happened enough that I [...] (02/02/10 09:00 AM)
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing - 5 Ways to Rock Customer Review Sites.
5 Ways to Rock Customer Review Sites
Share5 Ways to Rock Customer Review SitesThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing There’s been a fair amount of coverage recently about the ins and outs, good and evil, usefulness and rudeness of customer rating and reviews sites. No matter how you feel about these social recommendation sites, if you own a small business of any kind, [...] (02/01/10 09:00 PM)
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