The 1-second ad

You gotta go here.

I guarantee these will be the most talked-about ads on Superbowl Sunday.

Special thanks to Chris for pointing me there.

Update: I was wrong - no splash at all. I watched most of the Superbowl and only saw one of the 1-second ads. There is not much way for them to make an impact with just one tiny ad! (Did anyone else out there see any more than one?)

The mining cabin

Andrew Hyde, Boulder entrepreneur, has a mining cabin office. In fact, if you google "mining cabin", his comes up as the top entry. (I guess mining cabins are old enough that they're not on the internet much.)

His office is part of skinnycorp, the host for Blogcamp Boulder last weekend. If you're ever in Boulder, I'm sure they would welcome a visit. And you don't need to be skinny to enter.

Anyhow, I thought it was a very creative approach to office-ness. (How can you make your office space more interesting?)

Obamicon

Jenny pointed me to the most hilarious site: here.

Yes, you can do this to yourself too. (Maybe someday you can run for president.)

Bad icons and good communication

For Christmas I received an item that came in a carrying case with this little tag inside.

What in the world are these little icons trying to tell me? I don't have the smallest clue.

And that brings me to the question - what are some things that you assume that others know when you're giving a message that they may not understand? Often we can be blind to the bad icons we are putting out there. So it's worth asking others if that "icon" we made communicates what we intended it to. The best "others" to ask might be those outside of our working realm.

A bit of blogging cynicism

These days, there is so much information out there that the chances of someone clicking on your url when you comment on a blog and then becoming a devotee are pretty small.

Questionable space

In contrast to yesterday's post, I was amused (in a critical way) of this section that added another foot to my supermarket checkout receipt... a credit card application form!!

I thought the "credit crunch" was real - we have received about 90% less mail from credit card companies asking us to apply for another card lately. And then this receipt comes my way.

Credit companies take note: doling out applications every which way is not going to help the world economy - at least in the long run.

PodCamp Boulder

I went to PodCamp Boulder over the weekend. It was excellent. Rather than rewrite the book, you can go here for a great review.

Wasted space

Dunno if you have been to Taco Bell in the last year or so. They have a "feel good" micro-campaign on their hot sauce packets - cute little phrases in that space.

This particular phrase always bothers me - I think they should use that little area for advertising. I'd suggest they sell that space to companies for putting only a website address. (I'll take 5% of the profits for coming up with the idea.)

I guess it's a Monk-like trait I have - wanting to optimize everything. I do get offended by advertising appearing everywhere, so I'm not sure why I am OK with it appearing on Taco Bell packets.

300 Words

300 Words is a new blog that Jon Swanson created. Check it out!

Yours truly is the guest writer for today.

Connections, part 2

I just finished skimming a totally boring book: Social Networks and the Semantic Web, by Peter Mika. It might be great if you're into academic language and maybe have a PhD. I don't, so it was not riveting.

The one concept that was sort of new to me is the idea that you can be a unique bridge between various spheres of interest. You might be the only person on this planet that could make an important connection between someone you know and someone they need to know! So the area of social media does have payoffs. Some are financial but the most important ones are relational.