Buying a camera for Christmas? The Do-it-Yourself MAKE blog points out a great feature on the Flickr photo community called Find a Camera. At a glance you can see which high end cameras, point and shoot cameras and camera phones Flickr members are using. Click on one of the cameras in the list and you'll be linked right to member photos taken with that camera. This is a great example of how online communities create access to information you otherwise couldn't get easily. From there it's just a click to buy.
I'm heading to the land of Wegman's where we'll be setting the table for 25 people. We'll all be eating my mother-in-law's excellent stuffing. Have a good turkey. See you Monday.
You know the drill. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and the planet faces certain destruction. Scientists say it's not a question of if it happens, but when. Consider that "each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery." So you'll be glad to know NASA drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph so he or she can then use some as-yet-to-be-invented device to gently nudge it of course. Ask not what your planet can for you...
Ads are making their way even into our most sacred places. It began with Hollywood marketing "The Passion of the Christ" and the Republicans marketing a conservative agenda, and now it's moving right on over to products with no intrinsic religious value. Chrysler is now promoting its Aspen SUV via 14 of the largest predominantly African-American megachurches in the country. And Pink Slip bloggerMaureen Rogers points out that Donald Trump thinks "When it comes to money, churches are getting smart." Trump blogs that some churches are now installing ATMs. No more excuses that you forgot your offering money.
Seth Godin blogs about a little time-waster called Line Rider. Created as a project for an illustration class, the anonymous inventor says, "It's not a game, it's a toy. What I mean is there are no goals to achieve and there is no score." Godin says this simple little toy may be more fun than PlayStation 3 (or the potentially disappointing Wii) because "sometimes, simple ideas, vividly executed, will defeat Marketing with a capital M." Warning - Line Rider is addictive.
Slate's Erik Sofge writes a scathing review of the just-launched Nintendo Wii. The problem? The Wii's motion detection controller , in his opinion, stinks. The most complex thing for casual gamers is figuring out how to use the controller, and the Wii was going to be the answer, giving anyone the ability to use intuitive movements to play games. But because the controller doesn't target well, games have had to compensate with how-to graphics or auto-targetting. The analogy Sofge uses? Instead of swinging a bat, it feels like you're playing T-Ball. Slate's Chris Suellentrop writes a much more favorable review, saying there are issues, "But the Wii and its Wii Remote carry the promise of greater games to come." Regardless of what the critics say, the Wii is selling out all over the place.
As Hunter S. Thompson once said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Last week I posted this surreal video of two Bank of America employees who BofA'd the lyrics to U2's "One." Well, it seems Universal Music Publishing Group has posted the text of a cease-and-desist letter in the comments section of Stereogum.com, just one of the many sites displaying the, um, parody. Why would Universal bother? Now more of us will feel compelled to watch that weird video.
An airplane is a flying Petri dish. So when herbal supplement Airborne handed out free samples on a JetBlue flight I was on recently, I downed it. I didn't get sick, so I'm a convert. And I'm not alone. Airborne projects $300 million in sales this year. Boston-based Summit Partners owns a controlling interest in the company and has been quietly shopping it around. The buzz says it could fetch $1 billion, but skeptics disagree, saying that Airborne's claim to prevent colds is not clinically proven and competitors could counter with research saying it's ineffective. But with 80 percent of first-time users planning to buy Airborne again in the next 12 months, that may be just the kind of problem a buyer would like to catch.
The typical American eats pie 10.7 times per year. (How much you want to bet most of it is eaten on Thanksgiving?) Well marketers continue to tap into our pie thing. Godiva has introduced a limited-edition pie-flavored chocolate line featuring eight flavors, from apple crumb to banana cream. Jones Soda has a special pie pack featuring five pie flavored sodas: apple, banana cream, cherry, key lime, and blueberry. Mmmm - drink down that fresh baked pie flavor...
Woburn-based Shared Insights is collaborating with Pearson Publishing, Wharton and the MIT Sloan School to solicit more than one million alumni, faculty and students to serve as authors and editors of We Are Smarter Than Me, which will be published by Pearson next Fall. The site has already attracted more than 1,500 contributors. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales serves on the board for the project that, once completed, will be the first management book created entirely as a wiki.
An internal memo written by Yahoo Senior VP Brad Garlinghouse (he heads up Yahoo.com and Yahoo Mail among other big products) was leaked to the Wall Street Journal this weekend airing some dirty Yahoo laundry. Blogging Stocks says this shows that Yahoo has a big management problem, but also, like the crux of the memo states, Yahoo isn't making the choices and trade-offs that lead to a defined strategy. Instead "it's stuck in the middle - spreading peanut butter evenly across all its businesses."
You know the drill. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and the planet faces certain destruction. Scientists say it's not a question of if it happens, but when. Consider that "each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery." So you'll be glad to know NASA drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph so he or she can then use some as-yet-to-be-invented device to gently nudge it of course. Ask not what your planet can for you...
Slate's Erik Sofge writes a scathing review of the just-launched Nintendo Wii. The problem? The Wii's motion detection controller , in his opinion, stinks. The most complex thing for casual gamers is figuring out how to use the controller, and the Wii was going to be the answer, giving anyone the ability to use intuitive movements to play games. But because the controller doesn't target well, games have had to compensate with how-to graphics or auto-targetting. The analogy Sofge uses? Instead of swinging a bat, it feels like you're playing T-Ball. Slate's Chris Suellentrop writes a much more 
An airplane is a flying Petri dish. So when herbal supplement Airborne handed out free samples on a JetBlue flight I was on recently, I downed it. I didn't get sick, so I'm a convert. And I'm not alone. Airborne projects $300 million in sales this year. Boston-based Summit Partners owns a controlling interest in the company and has been quietly shopping it around. The buzz says it could fetch $1 billion, but skeptics disagree, saying that Airborne's claim to prevent colds is not clinically proven and competitors could counter with research saying it's ineffective. But with 80 percent of first-time users planning to buy Airborne again in the next 12 months, that may be just the kind of problem a buyer would like to catch.
The typical American eats pie 10.7 times per year. (How much you want to bet most of it is eaten on Thanksgiving?) Well marketers continue to tap into our pie thing. Godiva has introduced a limited-edition 
