American Madness

According to everyone’s favorite semi-authoritative,mostly accurate source, Wikipedia:

In 2006, [Deepak] Chopra launched Virgin Comics LLC alongside his son, Gotham Chopra, and Richard Branson, famed entrepreneur and thrill-seeker. The aim of the company is to promote and examine South Asian themes and culture through the use of the traditional comic book medium. [9]

Well, since 2006 it looks like they have decided to broden their horizons a bit. According to the Virgin Comic website the goal of Virgin Comics is two fold:

1. The creation of original stories and character properties that tap into the vast libraries of mythology and re-invent the rich indigenous narratives of Asia in a unique, compelling and, and entertaining way.

2. Collaborating with creative talent from around the world - from filmmakers, to writers, to musicians, and other artists - to craft original stories and character properties initially in the form of comics and graphic novels subsequently to be developed into films, television, animation, gaming, wireless content, online, merchandise and more.

While I am not writing to criticize Virgin Comics (more…)

Last week I was pretty miserable, I had a bad head cold, my sinuses were killing me, my throat felt as if I had been swallowing sandpaper (which I had not) and my nose wouldn’t stop running. After digging through my medicine lunch box (yes, we keep all of our first aid and cold cures in a lunch box, a Curious George one at that) I discovered that pretty much all we had were cough drops and Airborne. I went through the cough drops pretty quickly kept drinking Airborne through out the day. That is until I read that it contains about 1500& of the daily recommendation of vitamin C, then I decided moderation was best and eased off the 4 glasses of airborne a day.

Needless to say, by Sunday I was feeling 95% better (I still have a bit of congestion, but nothing too bad). Apparently this has little to do with Airborne… Or maybe it has everything to do with Airborne (that was pretty much where all of my Vitamin C intake was coming from). According to a NY Times article Airborne has decided to settle a class action lawsuit out of court, admitting to no wrong doing, but I am sure changing its unproven claims that it helps prevent and cure the common cold.

For more info you can check out the settlement website here. Pretty much you will get a refund for the Airbrne you purchased (part of the millions of dollars of sales from last year). Personally I am going to skip it, I took Airborne pretty much as a dietary supplement (which is what it actually is), pumping up the Vitamins in my system to help my immune system battle that evil cold. By the end of this week I hope to again have a stable system with no signs of the cold insurgents.

As I am sure many of you coffee drinkers know, Starbucks was closed for a few hours last Tuesday as they re-trained their baristas on how to make a proper cup of coffee. While Dunkin’ Donuts took advantage of this and was selling $0.99 cups of joe, Starbucks was busy putting up signs in their stores saying “Your drink should be perfect every time. If not, let us know and we’ll make it right.”

And the NY Post put them to it, going to a couple of different Starbucks and placing orders and having some of their coffee remade at each. At one they had their drink made a total of three times.

Now while conceptually this is nice (cause really, how many people are actually going to say something after the first month of this) their may be a few snags in their plan which won’t be revealed until you already have a 10 minute line ahead of you in the morning and someone up front insists that their coffee be made over-and-over again.

Personally, I think each and every one of you coffee drinkers should get out there and take advantage of this. Have those Starbucks baristas make you pot after pot of coffee until it meets your standard for fine quality. I mean, after all, if you are going to pay a premium price for coffee you might as well get what you consider to be a premium cup of coffee, right?

Josh posted about the excellent Ikea website set up right now with slow motion shots that allow you to travel through the frame a little while ago. Well, now we bring you a one-off from that.

Outside the US in, let’s say Sweden (just a guess from the test), they have another great site that allows you to go into “frozen rooms” and look around them… then travel through them, through an Ikea ‘portal’ into another “frozen” room.

Yes, we are aware that we are just propagating Ikea advertisements, but there is some clever advertising and marketing out there that deserves more attention. I would much rather bring your attention to good/clever work on the web rather then most of the other junk you see around the net.

Here is my open letter to Jakob Lodwick, the brilliant and recently freed founder of Vimeo and tech brains behind Connected Ventures (collegehumor.com, bustedtees.com).

Jakob,

I’m always coming up with new ideas for sites, but have little time to implement them. As you’re considering ideas, here’s a recent one I’d love to work on with you:

Removing money from politics by creating a political site that would seek to pool small donations from across the country to fully finance races in the House and Senate. (more…)

In the last two weeks Radiohead has been making a ton of news with the release of their new album In Rainbows. There has been a ton of hype surrounding it, as one of the most popular bands around decided to release their newest album directly over the internet and allowed customers to pay what they wanted for it. You may have read about it in one of my previous posts (1, 2).

Anyway, on Wednesday the album was released, folks could go online to the Radiohead website and download the album for what ever price they chose (including $0.00) or they could purchase a $80.00 box set that would ship in December with some special stuff included, making this the first album released by a super-major band without the help of a major label.

Well, apparently that was all a load of hooey. According to the Financial Times: “Radiohead’s much-debated decision to let fans choose what they pay for its new album online is a promotional tactic to boost sales of compact discs, the band’s management said yesterday.” Yes, they released a version of the album online to promote sales of the actual album. There are actually a number of things in this article that annoyed me to some extent or just plain pissed me off. Let’s look at a few of them, shall we:

(more…)

Okay, the other day I complained about the New York Times with their “Times Select” Feature that they slap onto popular articles so you actually have to pay to read them, well they did it again with another article I was planning on writing about here. Almost came to be that you wouldn’t be able to read it, fortunately, I discovered a work around to this solution. Let’s say I retyped the entire article here and it is available to read after the post (with proper credit to the author and the NY Times of course).

Anyway, we are back to my favorite topic to write about: Water.

We’ve previously noted that drinking water is on the rise, over taking soft drinks, coffee, milk, and encroaching on beers territory. We’ve also noted that NY has begun to campaign to get people to drink more tap water instead of fancy bottled waters. Now we have an article from the New York Times (posted after the jump since yo can no longer access it online) titled “A Battle Between the Bottle and the Faucet” which briefly touches on the uphill battle tap water is going to need to fight to prevail over bottled water. Multiple government agencies are getting involved with this one as well: “The city Health Department, mindful of high obesity rates, says water is more healthful than many other, sugar-filled drinks. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection touts its low environmental impact. Both note that it’s practically free.”

(more…)

Campaign materials tend to be a dime a dozen and be of the typical “Vote Clinton” button or ‘picture of the candidate with their name and the election year’ variety. Way back in the 60’s Barry Goldwater had a clever campaign with Au H2O. Every now and then you’ll find a clever button or campaign premise, but not often. There’s little that you would really want to display beyond the election date.

That is what makes some of Barack Obama’s materials so refreshing. The 008 Movement is backing Obama and has produced some well-designed materials. I think NotCot asked the right question: “Is Barack Obama trying to appeal to the designer set? Or does he really appreciate the importance of design?”

As many people know today is D-Day* for the long awaited iPhone, the next generation iPod that is also a phone, is being released today at 6pm. While I am sure lines have been forming for the last few days for the new AT&T phone (because it is a sure sign a product will be good when they sign on to America’s least reliable or used carrier) companies like T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon are fearing the loss of some customers today.

In a bid to retain their customer base and maybe even gain a few new customers, Verizon issued a press release yesterday announcing: “Verizon Wireless Stores Open All Day June 29 For Customers To Test Drive The Nation’s Most Reliable Wireless Network, Purchase Any Of 18 Multi-Media Music Devices.” For the record, this is the same promotion that Verizon has been pushing in their television commercials for the last 2 months.

(more…)

So, I have had this sitting in my Inbox for a while, been meaning to post about it. A friend even sent me a link to it. I figure, since I haven’t gotten around to it yet I can’t really review it, but I can comment on this new trend.

Channels like HBO and Showtime are taking some of their new shows and making them available for free. Showtime did it with the first two episodes of The Tudors on Time Warner Cables Free Movies -on-Demand. Now HBO is doing with their new show Flight of the Conchords, but instead of doing it on a cable channel, they just posted it online here.

This is an interesting new concept, because while they are pushing the show, hardcore, trying to reel in new audience members before the show even starts, they are also banking that the show will be so appealing that folks will run out and subscribe to HBO or Showtime. Yeah Alternative Marketing!

Of course if the show sucks, or editing makes characters look like Ken and Barbie (that would be the editing in The Tudors) it just makes the show look bad and people start to write off these channels. Anyway, I’ll probably watch the show tonight and revise this post later on- Or just write another post and reference this one so it looks like I am writing new posts left and right.