Google’s new “My Location” feature for its mobile maps application is groovy. Because it’s in beta and 85% of us don’t have GPS-enabled mobile phones, we can’t be too picky about accuracy. I tried it tonight on a Blackberry 8130 from my living room to learn that my house is on the freeway. OK, not quite. A shaded larger area the shape [...]
In the wake of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and even the upstart Buy Nothing Day, what phraseology helped consumers make sense of today? Call it Tally Tuesday. But how great it would be to see a breakout of data for money spent by consumers on the four days following Thanksgiving.
Early reports say online spending Monday rose 21% over last year. Cyber Monday has roots in the [...]
As a follow-up to my Nov. 17 post, I noticed that San Diego-based Slacker has posted additional Portable Player product photographs (a handful of new UI screen shots) to its website. But it still needs more to tell a great story. To their credit, the Slacker team is including a link in customer emails to video from an October segment that CNN ran on [...]
Saw a little item on NYT today. The topic: How virtual our lives have become, yet how face-to-face interaction remains a natural wonder. No logging in with user name and password required. Smile. Talk. Enjoy. Online social networks help us enhance and expand human networks. We benefit from access to information, cultures, interests and knowledge [...]
One of my favorite brands is Moots. The company builds bicycle frames and components available in one color: bead-blasted titanium. Think no frills, functionality and simplicity like the iPod. New Moots titanium frames fetch about $2,500, give or take a few hundred dollars.
The Steamboat Springs, Colorado, company is small, competing in a global marketplace where [...]
At first glance, the Amazon Kindle looks like a modern Etch A Sketch in eggshell white with keyboard and wireless features. Kinda ugly yet neat. But the product’s name, value proposition and target audience elude me.
First, the name: Kindle? As in to ignite? Imagine a Kindle product launch after the holiday shopping season. Any spark? [...]
Slate this week included a catchy piece that asks if those of us who remember how cutting-edge and cute Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were in 1998’s “You’ve Got Mail,” will abandon email for more popular texting and IM of our children’s generation. The rise of Facebook and MySpace, combined with texting (wildly popular in [...]
It took longer than predicted, but availability for portable digital music devices from Slacker was announced this week in advance of Black Friday, the largest U.S. consumer spending day of the year. Slacker said it’s taking online pre-orders for players that will ship in mid-December. But no retail sales yet where a hands-on experience is [...]
In the world of advertising agencies, awards are now bestowed for the act of creative planning. This from an organization of creative agency planners. Its mission statement below. I am not making this up.
“The Account Planning Group exists to promote and celebrate excellence in creative thinking. We believe that creativity is the key to differentiated, [...]
Dick Pound draws blood, ripping professional baseball on its drug testing program. Top section from tomorrow’s NYT from a story out of Madrid, where doping experts are meeting: After years of criticizing Major League Baseball for what he called useless, toothless drug-testing policies, Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, chastised the sport again [...]
