internet cool?!

Quite often songs are written about the body. But different songs and more importantly different genres of music focus on different body parts. Guess which genre focuses on the “booty”? :)

This site is awesome. It’s called Fleshmap and it charts (based on a sample of thousands songs) the frequency of body parts in that genre. Then they represented visually on a map. The size of a circle corresponds to how often that part is mentioned in each genre. Click on a genre name to see a close-up that shows exactly what words were used.

from the site:

Fleshmap is an inquiry into human desire, its collective shape and individual expressions. In a series of studies, we explore the relationship between the body and its visual and verbal representation. (It) investigates the relationship between language and the body. Verbal manifestations of human physicality in music, poetry, and religion are distilled to their basic elements. In a play with language, the “body rebus” emerges as a visual representation of cultural expressions of the physical in us. Read more about their method here. Nice work!

From YouTube:

“I was watching Larry King Live w/Bill Clinton tonight when a story from BBC News cut in about the death of Pavarotti. Between one of the scenes, my eye caught something. I took out the camera and rewinded my DVR and recorded it. This is freaky! It is a single frame, flashed once with a message. Pause the video during the 11-12 second and you will see the message.”

Wow. This sure is an interesting one to ponder. I have also placed it in a .jpg below.

Stealing your co-worker’s lunch is a downright contemptible act, that is, if it’s perpetrated by someone other than you. But, if you’ve ever had your lunch stolen, you know the the frustration and anger it causes. You know the revenge and ill-will it inspires. And you know that no matter how well you try to hide your lunch bag at the back of the refrigerator, something’s gonna be missing when you open it. Well, lament no more. The Anti-Theft Lunch Bag to the rescue…

Anti-Theft Lunch Bags are regular sandwich bags that have green splotches printed on both sides. After your sandwich is placed inside, no one will want to touch it.

If you’re interested in getting your hands dirty with these bags, please send an email to skforlee@gmail.com and you thank Sherwood Forlee for saving your egg-salad on rye.

So I found this site today. There is something about this app that celebrates Typography in every way my brain is inclined to see it. Play with it…and don’t forget to enter your own letters. Really amazing stuff - for such a simple toy.

Typography is a special thing for me. I wouldn’t say I’m the best Typographer - far from it. But I am always fascinated by typefaces and their relationship to how expressive a designer can be in any medium. I’ve found over the years (and it has always amazed me) how certain designers can really have communion with Typography while other so called “Designers” don’t even scratch the surface. To me, Typography is something that appeals to all senses. It’s a design adventure. (Just ask my buddy Erok (and his Typography Friday experiments.

Porsche is now running a marketing campaign in the form of online tools to photoshop your favorite model in front of your home. below is a piece of content created from the tool by your friends at Gizmodo. on their site they posted it with the caption: “as you can see, a $100,000 sports car really classes up the joint…”

As a marketing dork, Porsche fan and owner, blogger and proponent of rich and engaging thinking, this idea saddens me deeply.

Postings like the Gizmodo one will do more to detract from the Porsche brand rather than help its cause. the campaign couldn’t be more off target, it couldn’t be more ill-informed (no embed tags guys? really?) and worst of all, it couldn’t do LESS to entice a prospective buyer.

What’s that? “not intended for acquisition,” you say? to that I say, “bullshit - all digital should intend acquisition.” But what’s more, this thing isn’t much of a vehicle to spread the good word of the brand either. That is, unless of course thousands of smarmy bloggers putting a 911 in front of a trailer park is suddenly good branding?

Funny enough, if you talk to the marketing team at Porsche they will tell you “we’ve spent years establishing the Porsche brand - the visuals of our cars and where they show up. We choose very carefully how you experience Porsche and in what context you discover one.”

*insert long awkward pause here*

Oops, guess you’re making exceptions now, boys? just this once? Personally, I could see this being an amazing idea a few steps down the line during the process when you are already at Porsche’s website and you have just finished spec-ing out your favorite car. (Want to see this in your driveway - click here, etc.) that would be awesome. That would be valuable. And that would have a filter built into it preventing abuse like you see above.

Porsche has a special sauce - this just pissed in it. In 1963, Porsche taught the world what a sports car should feel like - both practically and in its marketing. in 2009 with the redesign of the 997, the launch of the Panamera and a slew of new fuel efficient answers the the “sports car” question, now is the time for Porsche to “re-teach” us and remind us of their position, not clutter the airwaves with mixed brand messages.

Sheesh.

Hey there. I discovered this neat little single-server today: Trip It!

what is it?

Trip It is an instant travel planner. Book your hotel. Book your back massage. Book your air fare (just not on Delta, apparently) and sent it to plans@tripit.com and Trip It will organized your itinerary and send it to you. Awesome. Would have been a Rich Idea if ANY of your favorite Airline or Hotel brands thought of it first. But they didn’t. So now one will have to acquire them. :P

I’m always hunting for new/interesting social web games. There is so much stuff out there that people are already playing (and we can learn A LOT from). I just discovered this tonight and haven’t had a chance to play, but it actually seems pretty interesting. Email Roulette could be a great way to meet people (blind dating meets forum lurking?) or at the very least give you a few hours of random entertainment.

from the site:

When you sign up for Email Roulette, you provide your email address and choose a user name. For security reasons, your password is emailed to you automatically. Upon receiving your password, you have log in to start playing. When you submit your message, it gets sent randomly to another player who has signed up. They have the option of responding to you or not; you won’t know who it went to unless they write back… so you better make it interesting! Of course, it goes both ways. If you want to send emails, you have to receive them as well. When you get a message, it will tell you the username and email address of the sender. You can choose whether to write back or not - the sender does not get any information about you unless you choose to provide it. One way we try to keep Email Roulette interesting is making everyone send at least one Email Roulette every six months. If you go past that time, your account will be deleted.

I think I’ll try it. Anyone wanna play?

Nissan’s new “ECO pedal” has been engineered to encourage good fuel economy with a servo-actuated gas pedal that will push back on the driver’s lead foot when on-board computers detect wasteful acceleration. According to Nissan, vehicles equipped with the ECO pedal, and real-time fuel consumption gauges in the instrument panel, have returned a 5-10 percent increase in fuel efficiency. Electronic “nannies” are all the rage these days, with many cars being equipped with lane-departure warning, adaptive cruise control, ABS, GPS, it’s a wonder we all still remember how to drive!

The pedal is programmed to push back at your foot when its computer decides you don’t really need to accelerate as fast as you want. Nissan hopes that the pedal will teach overzealous drivers how to drive more efficiently, ultimately saving 5 to 10-percent on your fuel bill in the process and be introduced on some models as early as 2009.

Soaring fuel prices and global warming concerns are pressuring automakers such as Nissan to introduce more eco-friendly products.  What better way to increase your brand’s recognition as eco-conscious than to create a new product like this that practically advertises itself.  Brilliant.  Rich Ideas don’t have to run in a media vehicle - they just need to change your brand’s perception. Feel different about Nissan now?  I do.

so how does the eco pedel work?
Well, the technology involved will make the pedal press upward whenever the vehicle is moving too quickly for your own good. According to Nissan, this system is able to improve fuel efficiency. The Eco Pedal has been programmed to calculate the most efficient rate of acceleration in a vehicle, and it might cause the driver to be frustrated with their cars especially when they feel like a quick overtake. A meter on the dashboard flashes and changes colours to help drive the message home and it can be over-ridden if things are really just getting too much for you.

This makes me mad/happy. We had a similar idea for one of our clients but they were too slow to make it happen (sorry guys, if you’re reading…). Anyway. This looks like a fantastic opportunity for Databanana to branch out.

chapter one:

chapter two:

chapter three:

Pretty cool, eh? I’ll post the new chapters as they happen. Maybe one of them will even be from POKE. :)

how it works:

Rootclip provides an initial story idea with a “root” or starter clip - one to two minutes of compelling video that begins a story and is totally open-ended. The video gives the subsequent contributors whatever details they’ll need to continue the unchangeable parts of the story. How the story ultimately ends is up though, is completely up to you, the contributor. Contributors then submit their one-minute videos to move the story along to the next chapter, with voting on all video submissions so the most voted upon video is used for the next chapter. A total of six chapters are used to complete the story - and take that initial story idea into totally unexpected directions. Ultimately, Rootclip is about the user community. Contributors to YouTube, amateur and Indie filmmakers, budding screenwriters, even actors that want to show their stuff - all get a chance to contribute their best material to Rootclip to add to the story. The best, one to two minute video submissions are added over time to the original story idea until an exciting six to 12 minute film is completed.

a lil’ incentive too!

Each one minute video submission that becomes a chapter in the story gets acknowledgment in the Rootclip video credits and a cash prize of $500. The Grand Prize winner gets a trip to the Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan to hobnob with Indie film producers and creative types. Michael Moore programs and plans this festival and will meet with the ultimate Rootclip winner. Are you listening members of the uber-fragmented network media? Are you watching FOX News with your average viewership of age 63? Your future targets are getting their entertainment elsewhere. Here’s a thought: stop watching your ratings drop and start participating. That is all.

Eric sent me to Yearbookyourself.com. I have to admit, I’ve seen things like this before and kinda ignored them, but something about the site compelled me to interact. So I did. And boy I’m glad I did. I mean, look at that hair. Fantastic.