This is cool...A $3.39 Big Mac for the price of a double cheeseburger by doing a little McDonalds Menu Re-Mixing.

I can't stand McD's food, but if you dig it, you'll dig this video.

via AdRants.

Technorati Tags: McDonalds, Cheap+Food

I was doing my annual reading of Ted Levitt's Marketing Myopia this week and got to thinking about the whole process of product development and what business certain companies are really in.

Not sure where this came from, but gas stations are one of the places that I just loathe. They think they're in the business of dispensing fuel and, save for the convenience store movement, which was a marginal improvement over just pumps, they've not changed much. I'm not sure that I'll be able to redefine their business, but here's a few things I was thinking of that would just make things better. Hell, it might change their

...Get better coffee. Shell or BP or someone should partner with Starbucks or Peets or someone. Gas station coffee is notoriously horrible. Why not do something about it, promote it, and raise your margins a bit. Put a major recognized brand in place, not some shitty house brand that's no different than folgers.

...Put air hoses with built in tire pressure gauges at every pump, and charge for it. Mario Andretti and Michelin are all over the TV with their 'inflate your tires' safety message, yet there's one air hose hidden behind the building that only works 1/2 of the time. Why not become the "Volvo" of convenience stores and promote safety, quality and efficient transportation. Won't you join us, my ass. Put some muscle into it. And, charge me for the privilege of pumping up my tires, or ask me when I'm done filling up, like you do when you want me to buy a car wash. What do I need more, fuel economy & safety or a car wash?

...Put Purell dispensers next to the toweling and window washer. I hate the way that my hands smell when I get done pumping gas and I'm sure I'm not alone. How am I supposed to eat that pastry I just bought if my hands smell like fuel?

I'm sure that there's more, but there's a few ideas...if someone did those, I'd certainly get loyal real quick!

The July issue of Business 2.0 (not yet on the web) has an article on how Gamal Aziz of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is reinventing the property for maximum profitability. I think his idea on working backward was worth the price of my B2.0 subscription for the month...

Aziz's secret is a counterintuitive management practice - nicknamed "working backward" - that he invented on his arrival at the Grand. The strategy breaks down an operation into constituent parts, then calculates the maximum potential revenue that each business or space could generate in a perfect world - that is, if every customer spent the most the market could bear and if traffic reached its physical limits. Aziz then subtracts the actual sales from the hypothetical number and calls the difference a loss, even if the venue is making money.

His strategy is paying off. His projects featured in the magazine have all seen revenue improvements ranging from a 40% increase all the way to a 786% increase.

Think of the implications of applying this to your website properties, including RSS feeds, email newsletters and other potential revenue generating real estate. Is the real estate on your site generating max revenue? If you were to break down each section and extrapolate it's full potential from ideal figures, how much money are you leaving on the table?

37Signals puts out a test version of their next gizmo - Campfile - a business chat tool with an absolutely seamless file uploading and sharing capability. Can't wait to see this baby live and in full action.

Technorati Tags: 37Signals, Business Chat

My good friend Mark Kohls, owner of one of the most unique companies I've ever known of, Document History, gets a great blog mention today from the Chicagoland Genealogical Consortium.

Mark is a budding entrepreneur with an awesome little company. Document History offers you an affordable and powerful way to gather together your special reminiscences for your children, grandchildren and friends. Through Life Story RecordingTM, they provide a structured process to help you record your life story in your own voice.

Cool. Way cool.

Listening to a panel of VC's @ LesBlogs. They're talking about the fact that a lot of web 2.0 entrepreneurs are getting lazy and only try to 'get it up enough' to sell out to the GYM (Google - Yahoo - Microsoft)

Interesting.

The SRI conference last week wasn't just about blogging. As such, there were several people there from the social networking space which I had the pleasure to meet. Ohad Jehassi, an HBS graduate and founder of friendsand.com, and online social networking and dating site, has combined the best of AOL style chat, locked pictures (amazing what you can learn from the adult industry) and a host of other features to make his dating/social networking service so unique. It's only been out a few months and there are already over 300,000 members.

I asked Ohad about where he thought RSS fit into the scheme of online dating. His site does not offer anything in the way of RSS. From what I gather from most folks, RSS has not yet permeated the online dating space in a big way at all.

The big idea here is that if I were looking for a certain type of person, I'd want an IRSS feed (individualized RSS) that feeds me custom results anytime someone that matchs my profile submits a new profile or updates a profile, or posts a video cast or podcast about themselves on the dating site.

We also talked at length about how the adult industry leads the way in many areas online. Perhaps that's what Hugh meant by Business Porn.

Kevin states an interesting case on Innovation, based on his recent read of this article.

I'm with him on the Wal- Mart and logistics example. It ties nicely to the corollary of Starbucks being in the 'real estate' business and innovating the hell out of how corporations seek out and secure facilities. This is not new, however, McDonalds did this first. (check out Built for Growth: Expanding Your Business Around the Corner or Across the Globe if you're interested in more about Starbucks)

In my view, a company's policy on innovation starts with leadership. If the leader is steadfast in their belief on innovation then so is the company. For example, I worked for a company that was solid in its stance on being a 'fast -follower' and we focused all of our energies in that area, and were sell served as a result.

Innovation is also one of those few areas where I feel too much customer focus can be detrimental. Not that you shouldn't innovate with the customer in mind, but if your idea of getting innovative is to hold focus groups to see what your customers want, you'll be madly dissatisfied with the outcomes. As an aggregate body, customers have no immagination.

Although, if the company has no imagination, then perhaps your only hope is to seek ideas and innovation through customer feedback. GM is a good case in point, which Ben draws out nicely in this post.

As a self-proclaimed researcher (I like to write a lot and collect a ton of info, so I guess I fall somewhere in that categorization) I have found Google's desktop search to be a way into my 'other brain'. The NY Times has an article today that more eloquetly states this same observation.

Tool for Thought By STEVEN JOHNSON

I was discussing my fervent use of the KnowBrainer tool with Paul of Brand Autopsy on Friday. He mentioned that there are several types of card decks out there such as the KB tool, but I can't seem to find a comprehensive collection. Here's what I have so far:

** The KnowBrainer by SolutionPeople
** IDEO Method Cards
** EyeWire Creativity Cards (download & print on card stock*
** The Creative Whack Pack and new Innovative Whack Pack
** Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck

Please comment on others that you've seen, or send me an email. Don't forget to tell me where to buy them!

[UPDATE]This article mentions two more creativity decks: The Observation Deck and The Oblique Strategies. (Thanks Bren)

CMO Magazine   , my new favorite marketing publication is doing absolutely the right thing with publishing their magazine content online at the same time that it shows up in print. Hence, I'm able to read it on the plane, and send links to their stuff to all my friends (or blog about it!) when I land.

There are two converging articles that make the case for improving enterprise-wide creativity through proper idea management.

First, Fast Company published an article on several myths of creativity [via Bizwerk], while CMO discussed the topic of Idea Management and how it goes 'way beyond the employee suggestion box.'

To me, the FC article is a little bit like the evening news. They blow things a little out of scope, but that doesn't mean the message isn't important. Unsavvy managers will kill creativity just by pursuing the habits and behavior that they always have. Moreover, those same mediocre managers are threatened by good ideas from all over the company, and especially from their people.

At the end of the day, good idea management and a penchant for creative thought that keeps them idea coffers full all stems from strong leaders with a passion for innovation and who aren't afraid of ideas that aren't theres (anyone who's worked somewhere with a rampant case of NIH syndrome will know what the opposite of this looks like).

Call to action: What do you think? Look at your leadership team. Do they embrace ideas, or are they holding on to their fleeting roles? What are the 5 most innovative thing each leader's team has come up with in the past 12 months? If nothing, take a damn hard look at who you have in leadership positions!

Some of the cool inventions of 2004 that we, as innovators, can all be proud of!

• Nike has come up with strapless swim goggles
  
• Shloops shoelace fasteners are patented rubbery tubes that keep your shoes securely tied all day
  
• Ripsense is a new indicator label that lets you know when fruit is ripe
  
• Space Ship One, the first privately-manned rocket to go into sub-orbital flight
  
• Violight toothbrush sanitizer - holds up to 4 toothbrushes and eliminates 99.9% of germs and bacteria

The folks at the Brain Brew Radio program are preparing a special series for next year on Brainstorming. The good, the bad and the ugly. Look for this series coming soon! For my contribution, I submit that of all the brainstorming sessions I've attended and tried to run, nothing beats a strong facilitator and a couple of quick brainstorming/problem solving tools. You can have a lot of mediocrity in the group, the cause, the tools, and the like, but the facilitator is the glue that holds it all together and has the power to bring out the best in the group

I'm at the Decision Sciences Institute conference in Boston today presenting on building brand community using weblogs. [download presentation] I've also had the great fortune to visit with thought leaders from a number of universities around the country, and just got an in-depth review of the power of the tablet PC in education, sales, and the executive ranks. Amazing technology.

More learnings from the conference later.

Ten little things that, once you read the article, you'll say "why the hell don't we do that?" Via the [non]billable hour, courtesy of the GlobeandMail.

1. Cellphones
By any standard you can think of -- coverage, price, ubiquity -- China's cellphone practices beat ours. You can use them in elevators, subways and parking garages. They work in Tibet, at the Great Wall, in remotest rural China, which is more than you can say for Ontario cottage country. Patients, doctors, nurses and visitors use them in hospitals, too, with no apparent ill effects.

2. Informative stop lights
In Tianjin, a city of 13 million people, traffic lights display red or green signals in a rectangle that rhythmically shrinks down as the time remaining evaporates. In Beijing, some traffic lights offer a countdown clock for both green and red signals.

During a red light, you know whether you have time to check that map; on a green light, you know whether to start braking a block away -- or to stomp on the accelerator, as though you were a Toronto or Montreal driver. (That's probably why Montreal has a few lights with countdown seconds for pedestrians.)

3. Transit debit cards
Wouldn't it be great to have a single debit card for buses, subways -- and taxis? That's how it works in Shanghai. Passengers don't have to fumble for exact change on buses and subways, or line up to buy tokens or tickets. Taxi drivers don't have to make change, or get ripped off by counterfeit bills, a real plague in China. And they aren't loaded down with cash, which would make them tempting targets for robbery.

4. Adult playgrounds
Adult playgrounds get everyone out in the fresh air, especially seniors who might stay shut in at home. Teens like to hang out there, too. And it sends a not-so-subtle propaganda message about the benefits of healthy living.

5. Anti-theft slipcovers
What do you do with a purse in a restaurant? It can slide off your lap, and looping the handle over the back of your chair is an invitation to a thief. In China, when you sling your purse or laptop or coat over your chair back, a waiter hurries to toss a tasteful slipcover over it. It foils thieves, and also protects coats from food spills. Some restaurants provide hooks under the table for purses.

Fast Company has their list of 100 innovations and concepts that you can look forward to in 2005!

Nick Duffill, one of the developers of ResultManager, has a great post on his blog, Beyond Crayons, about the reason why mind maps are so much more effective than text in conveying information. The spatial relationships and connections that mind maps create carry an incredible amount of information, even when the text (as in his example) is meaningless. A great read.

The London Business School has had the revelation that every college & university should have. They started to honestly look at their students, and at the hiring managers of those students/graduates, as customers.

What do end-users think of your product? What are their views on how it can be improved? Although addressed continually by enlightened executives throughout the world, these questions are not asked enough by the institutions that teach those executives: business schools. And that’s a pity, for graduate schools of business are missing a historic opportunity: to help make globalization work for the globe.

[via xplane:bBlog]

I like free things. If you like free things, and you like solving problems, have a look at this compendium of free creative thinking tools and resources that Chuck Frey has put together.

The Wall St. Journal covers Wikis.

"Once people try a wiki, they begin to like the idea that they can be empowered, which feeds into the idea of what a good manager does for his employees," says Wikipedia's creator, Jimmy Wales

Since starting my new gig at Schneider, I've been working diligently on 3 areas of competency that I want to enhance. Managment (of associates), Discipline & time management, and Framework for problem solving. Considering that I need the latter to properly attack the 2 former, I've spent a lot of time researching what tools one can use to 'get the job done' when it comes to achieving goals, overcoming issues, and solving problems.

In the past couple of months, I have written out countless mind maps as the genesis for solutions on almost every problem or issue I have encountered. I have never had so much clarity in solving problems as I have while using such an intuitive tool for problem solving. Below are some of the resources that can help you to get started, but the point of mind mapping is just to sit down & do it.

http://www.mind-map.com/EN/mindmaps/definition.html

http://www.mind-map.com/EN/mindmaps/how_to.html

http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/studyskills/mindmap/index.html

The second tool that has been indispensible has been the KnowBrainer from SolutionPeople of Chicago. They call it an 'accelerated innovation tool' but I call it my project meeting lifeline. I never leave for a meeting without it. I take most of my probing questions from it, and I evaluate most of my solutions against it. In short, it's become and essential tool in my process improvement teams. The tool costs $100, but it's worth every penny, and SolutionPeople will refund your money if you don't get the ROI back from it. When you think about it, people spend money on expensive software, useless books, and other non-portable tools that never really help you get the job done.

Check out how the KnowBrainer works...

How to Be Creative

I love reading Scott Berkun's work over at UIWEB! A recent piece that he wrote on getting through creative burnout has turned out to be very helpful to a couple of people, including me. There is sometimes a great deal of value in just blogging your daily experiences in whatever company you're working in or with, because there are certainly many ways to do things, and it's always great to learn how someone else approaches a problem, especially if they do a better job of solving that you or I can!

This latest essay on shepherding a well-run creative brainstorming session is one of the most comprehensive overviews on this subject that I have seen. I encourage you to read the whole thing (it's a long post) if you're at all interested in this sort of thing, but by way of summary, here are a few of the finer points.

• Location matters: Find a comfortable quiet room. If you can, pick a space not used by your team for any other purpose. Caffeine is a plus, as is food, comfy chairs, or anything you can think of that will help the people on your team to be playful.
  
• Have a specific purpose: The leader of the meeting should arrive with a specific question he's trying to answer or problem to explore.
  
• Know what you want, and what to do with it: If you are looking for a big raw list of news ideas to review later, then have a plan for how you'll review it. The simplest strategy is to plan an hour afterwards, for yourself alone, to pull out the 5 or 10 most interesting ideas (based on your opinion, or the group's) and examine them in detail.
  
• Know how to facilitate: Someone has to run the meeting, guiding the conversation in useful directions.
  
• Put the focus on the list: The whiteboard or easel should be the focal point of the meeting. Make it clear to everyone in the room that you are getting together with the goal of adding as many items as possible to that whiteboard.
  
• Comfort is key: Creative thinking involves exploring non-obvious and non-traditional ideas to find unexpected good ones. To find them you have to sort through many potential embarrassing, silly, goofy, or outrageous ideas.
  
• Establish the ground rules: This can help to establish comfort and make the time more useful. Will the meeting be a free for all, where anyone can suggest things at any time? Who will write things down and document the proceedings? Do what you can to reward team play: brainstorming should be about communicating, not competing.
  
• Postpone criticism: This is the creativity killer. Evaluating ideas too much kills new ideas. It does. Our minds shut down in a way if too much analysis goes on.

Noah Weiss of ChangeThis.com emailed me today with the following message. After I read their manifesto, I concur. I with them all the best, and can't wait to be along for the ride!

This summer, I'm working at Changethis (http://www.ChangeThis.com), which is a not-for-profit venture on the web that will work to change people's minds and moreover, change the tone and substance of the increasingly fundamentalist debate we're having in America today.

We're working with such authors as Jay Levinson, Donna Brazile, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, and Seth Godin.

Keep checking back. They launch mid August.

I'm a huge fan of mind-mapping software. If you're interested in practical application, have a gander at this post in the Innovation weblog. It takes a bit to get wrapped around this idea and it's more practical uses, but once you do, you'll never go back! Sure beats MS Project!

Innovation and creativity are things that people have come to expect from marketing. In fact, it's almost a stigma in certain circles that if you're from marketing, you're somehow blessed with innate creativity.

I guess we're all creative in some ways, but there's always room for improvement. Here's 10 ideas from the Apptility weblog on ways to develop the creative mind.

Ways to develop creative mind

1. Travel to new places.
   
2. Read from a variety of fields. (Hell, Just READ!)
   
3. Become curious about everything.
   
4. Attend professional meetings and seminars.
   
5. Join professional groups and associations.
   
6. Talk to anyone and everyone about your subject.
   
7. Develop a subject library for future reference.
   
8. Carry a small notebook and record useful information.
   
9. Scan magazines, newspapers and journals for articles related to your subject.
   
10. Evaluate ideas. Record what aspects of ideas are good and what aspects appear irrelevant or are not feasible because of constraints.
    

While these are all great ideas (and I honestly practice most of them, because, trust me, I need all the creativity I can get) there is almost always a void in execution. For example, I have a couple "creative" ideas that were spawned from my reading The McKinsey Mind, which pertain to using the approach of Category Management to organically grow your business by taking over functions of your customer's business where they are weak, and you have acute knowledge and strength. I like to call these times "convergence moments" because they are a convergence of ideas from different disciplines that combine to make something pretty interesting.

If you're looking for more on convergence, or combining interesting ideas, have a look at this post from the Manyworlds Business Blog on combining ideas using Fusion, Fission, Transposition and Abstraction.

In Dell's opinion, companies like his can move quicker and adapt faster. Institutions, like Southern Methodist University, where he spoke, are working hard to train future workforces, but they're too little, too late.

[via Syllabus]

Here's an interesting list of the 10 types of innovation identified by Doblin, a Chicago-based innovation consulting firm. It's neatly divided into major categories that include finance, process, offerings and delivery, and includes business examples of each type of innovation. Neat!

Thanks to the FastCompany Weblog via the Innovation Weblog for pointing out this broad, valuable overview of innovation!

MarketingSherpa: MarketingSherpa Experiment Diary: Can a New Desktop Application Replace Email Newsletters?

For those of you who are big fans of Marketing Sherpa and have trouble with email getting caught in your companie's SPAM filters, they've introduced a small desktop tool, similar to Weather Bug or the Google Toolbar which will plug their articles right to you when they're published.

Get new MarketingSherpa Case Studies, job listings, & how-to articles "zapped" directly to your PC, so you don't have to wade through email or fret about filters. Easy and risk-free. Install (or uninstall) in just 5 seconds. Click here for details. Updates about 8 times per week - free. No ad banners or pop-ups - guaranteed!

I've already installed it. We'll see how it goes.

My thoughts on the matter are that you have do be a damned useful purveyor of information to propose putting an intrevenous feed into a user's computer. Why not just do RSS instead? If I were them, I'd have entered into a partnership with some RSS reader companies to promote the adoption of RSS by those who don't have it, and encourage migration to RSS for people with SPAM filter issues. Better yet, why not team up with other sites like Marketing Profs and offer a package co-op deal, kind of how when you sign up for a newsletter and the thank you page offers you another 10 like-minded newsletters to sign up for.

ePrairie.com: Troika of Cable, DSL, Satellite Soon to Have New Power Line Opponent
CHICAGO – Not surprisingly, the number of flavors in which broadband will be served up this year is going up. Soon, the familiar troika of cable, DSL and satellite will have some new opponents to contend with: one in the clouds and the other buried in the ground, writes wireless expert Spiro Papadopoulos.

Victorville Daily Press: Students create bookless yearbook

Students at Goodwill Education Center in Victorville, CA dumped the idea of a bound yearbook for friends and classmates to sign at the end of the year in favor of a CD edition. My first question was "how do you sign a digital yearbook?" They've thought of that too...the CD will also come with a notepad inside the case, so students won't miss out on the time-honored tradition of signing each other's yearbooks.

I like my yearbooks. I guess I'm just too old fashioned However, if you're going to do a digital yearbook, why not take a page from CD-to-web marketers, and have a social networking website hosted by the school, for each class year. You could throw the CD in five years from now, click on someone's picture, and be brought to the website that shows you what they're doing now and how to get in touch with them. Savvy social networking companies such as friendster and classmates.com could sign multi-decade deals with schools to be information aggregators and providers. Part of the cost of the 'digital yearbook' would include membership to the school's social network online for a number of years...after which you could renew if you wish.

This could be an interesting business model for colleges as well. Those schools that have super alumni networks like USC could add value and increase endowments by providing alumni networking as a service.

Save for the obvious potential bandwidth issues, and the simple fact that I'm aPC user, this is a damn cool service. I'd love to have my home music collection available anywhere.

"TunesAtWork lets you listen to your personal iTunes music collection while
at your office or lab, even though your iTunes collection resides at home.
TunesAtWork is a specialized web server that runs on your home Macintosh
and serves web pages that present your music collection (including
playlists) organized visually much the same as in iTunes itself. This makes
it easy to find what you're looking for."

http://www.tunesatwork.com/

During the late 80's and early 90's, many companies, in an effort to facilitate the creation of their Internet presence, shifted control of the website and Internet technologies from their IT department to their marketing, or E-Commerce department. Yet, the average marketing manager is out of touch with what the web can really do, and IT management is just still feeling left out in the cold on the web. Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing and IT were to embed liaisons within each others' teams to forge new synergies.

Review the full article here.

There has been a lot of press about the Google Deskbar in the past couple of weeks, and rightfully so, it's a great tool, and I use mine every day. However, it's certainly not the first tool. There are other "desktop" web search tools, which, I might add, search more than JUST Google.

Copernic Agent Professional: Copernic Agent Professional simultaneously consults the best Internet search engines for you. Since each search engine covers only a part of the Web, by combining results from multiple sources Copernic will help you get the most out of the Web.

WebWolf: WebWolf is a desktop based Web Page Crawler. It explores the internet, searching for files, FTP Sites and links that match your search criteria.

EasySeeker: EasySeeker is designed for Internet users who desire to run highly comprehensive searches, but do not want to deal with the frustrations of complex utilities.

To Google's credit, they have done a great job of not really publicizing the tool, and letting us bloggers and journalists pick up on it, building significant buzz along the way.

Moreover, Google has done something great, whether by design or by default, and that is to allow the toolbar and deskbar to be installed without conflicting with much of the Win 2000 security that's inflicted on the desktops of many of their corporate users. This allows people like me to actually use these great tools at work, even with a fully locked-down system.

More Press...
USA Today: Deskbar seeks in small space
Poynter Online: Google Deskbar - A better way to Google.

College Journal.com: M.B.A. Students Dig In To a Real-World Product

Some of my first experiences in "real-world" marketing were as an undergrad student doing market research for the N.E.W. Zoo and the Green Bay Packers. I valued these opportunities as student and thought the world of this chance to put this type of experience on my college resume. I never, up until a couple of months ago, thought that I was taking business away from anyone.

Here's the scenario:

The Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana has a graduate program where students earn six academic credits rather than a salary for real-world marketing assignments done as "consulting" projects for local companies in need of marketing help. Hmm, sounds like the same thing that a "real-world" consultant might do for money? More to the point, Kelley School and one local company (so far, they are looking for more 'business') formed a long-term partnership this year called Bloomington Brands LLC. In effect, companies outsource brand management and some marketing responsibility to Bloomington Brands, which is staffed by full-time M.B.A. students at IU.

Here's the issue. Not necessarily my issue(yet...I don't do much consulting thus far), as I'm all for the hands-on education, but an issue nonetheless. Indiana University in Bloomington is a state run institution. The residents of Indiana pay state taxes of some description. Those state taxes go to fund various state functions, not the least of which is the education system, post-secondary and graduate schools included. Your state tax dollars are now subsidizing a state-run consulting business which is potentially taking away business from a for-profit consultancy which you may run.

Honestly, I'd have never thought of this unless someone pointed it out to me, or unless I'd have run into it myself. I have less of a problem if it's a private institution, because they are NOT funded by my state tax dollars. However, if I'm to give endowment money to my alma matter (St. Norbert College) and have them turn around and offer marketing consulting services to local business who are my target market, then I'll have a serious problem.

I invite your comments.

Eleven Inc, of San Francisco, named for Nigel Tufnel's "11" amplifier settings in the film "This Is Spinal Tap" continues to garner recognition for its innovative approach to helping clients with marketing strategy.

The most refreshing thing about Eleven is their self-proclaimed "media agnostic" approach to helping clients find the best media to suit thier branding and marketing strategy and goals. Here's a quick rundown of what makes this approach successful:

Trendsetters.com is about to release its 2004 volume of Trendscape, which I would personally like to purchase, but with a $270 price tag, I doubt that's in the budget.

For those of you in the same boat as me, might I recommend subsribing to thier newsletter, and also to Springwise and Trendwatching.com's newsletter.

Here are a few of the trends that they predict will shape 2004 and beyond:

- HDTV will change the media landscape by end of the decade.
- Society is going casual.
- "Surf wear" will permeate the planet as the most popular form of leisure dress, fueled by the skyrocketing sales of flip-flops.
- A growing number of single households will drive demand for services that save time, like combined pizza and DVD delivery and online dating.
- Mobile phones are reshaping society and Generation Y is leading the charge.

http://www.trendsetters.com/trendscape/

This week on Creativepro.com, George Penston takes a look at Studio MX 2004. While he's enthusiastic about Fireworks and Dreamweaver, which his in-depth analysis speaks of, he's less thrilled with Flash.

Creativepro.com - The Creative Toolbox: Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Reviewed

Wired News: The Great Library of Amazonia.

This has to be the most ingenious, and probably time-consuming task ever undertaken to attempt to illuminate the dark region of books. Right now at Amazon.com. Over the past spring and summer, the company created an unrivaled digital archive of more than 120,000 books. This has the makings of a very impactful tool, not only for bibliophiles, but for the the academic community and greater society at large.

From the Wired article:
"Seventy-one percent of college students use the Internet as their research tool of first resort," he says, citing figures from a 2001 PEW Internet Study. "Personally, I think this number is low. For most students today, if something is not on the Net, it doesn't exist."

And yet most books are not on the Net. This means that students, among others, are blind to the most important artifacts of human knowledge. For many students, the Internet actually contracts the universe of knowledge, because it makes the most casual and ephemeral sources the most accessible, while ignoring the published books. "It's shameful," Kahle continues, "because we have the tools to make all books available to everybody.

The bottom line is, you can search for any "words" that appear in books, you get the books that have those words in them, along with the page & phrase that it appears in. For example, I searched for "weblog" and "brand community", and I got the following on on Michael Solomon's book, Conquering Consumerspace: Marketing Strategies for a Branded World.

Excerpt from page 104: ". . . a button, and quickly have them appear on a site. Weblogs frequently look like online diaries, with brief musings about the . . ."
See more references to "weblog" and "brand community" in this book.

The goal is to quickly add most of Amazon's multimillion-title catalog.

Check out Amazon's take on it here:

Six Apart's Vice President of Business Development Anil Dash, says there are enterprise opportunities ahead for weblogs and weblog tools such as MovableType. In an interview with Executive News Editor Mark Jones, Dash outlined his vision for online publishing and his take on Weblog business models. - Read the InfoWorld Invterview

I only skimmed the article, but it's great to hear/see someone from the blog tools community expressing their vision. We need more people like this from Google and Blogger, speaking out and evangelizing the technology so that the world's IT departments get away from the mindset that this is some underground fad perpetuated by teenage girls with nothing better to do.

Rick Bruner posted this blurb on the NPR program On The Media offering their show in downloadable MP3 format. This has got to be one of the most innovative things that NPR has done in a while.

However, they still have not listened to Rick and his original post on this subject, or to anyone else for that matter, as all of their shows still default to Real player for streaming over the web, and are NOT downloadable.

I know that our own Wisconsin Public Radio sells cassettes of shows as a revenue generator, but who says that they can't offer MP3 downloads of shows as a similar revenue generation stream. I know, I know...piracy, copyright, distribution, all that crap. Blah. This is NPR for Pete's sake - I highly doubt that all of us NPR junkies are going to all of the sudden start swapping our latest download of Calling All Pets or To The Best of Our Knowledge over Kazaa!

This goes double for the folks over at Brain Brew Radio, who, at present, don't offer more than the most recent week's show via the web, and it's done in Real Audio. Now there's some valuable content -who wouldn't want to download that stuff and listen to it in Automobile University. We don't get that show syndicated in Wisconsin, so the ONLY way for them to reach me, and other potential listeners, is via the web.

I, for one, always give to NPR and WPR on a yearly basis. That being said, I'd be a lot happier about my *investment* if they were truly serving the needs of their user base.

Ergonomics Today(TM) - The Trusted Source for Ergonomics News

How Ergonomics Almost Stopped the California Recall
October 7, 2003

Some call it an election, others liken it to a circus, but whatever it is, today%u2019s California recall election would have had at least one less side show with a little timely ergonomics intervention. First it was a go, with all 135 or so candidates vying to stop California Governor Gray Davis mid-term; then it was off, courtesy of a little legal battle over ballots and how voters interact with them. In other words, ergonomics.

Brain Brew Radio | Creative Business Thinking

These guys are dynamite! They talk to small business owners, entrepreneurers, and all the like, and answer all of their business questions. It's kind of like the Car Talk for business people.

We don't get this on Wisconsin Public Radio, but thankfully these guys post their shows on the web!

Check em out!!! www.brainbrewradio.com