A Better Course

• We Made This: De-branding cigarettes
  Plain packaging, also known as generic, standardised or homogeneous packaging, means that the attractive, promotional aspects of tobacco product packages are removed and the appearance of all tobacco packs on the market is standardised. Except for the brand name (which would be required to be written in a standard typeface, colour and size), all other trademarks, logos, colour schemes and graphics would be prohibited.
  (tags: psychology design branding wemadethis cigarettes marketing policy brand )

• Copy Paste Character
  ☞ · • ●  ⌘
  (tags: writing web useful typography reference font )
• Dataset of the Day: Tesco, Demographics, and the USA | Off the Map – Official Blog of FortiusOne
  I then looked at the five boroughs that have the highest Tesco Express Density and compared their demographics with the other boroughs throughout London. The ranges of the top 5 boroughs exhibited somewhat similar trends in the above categories.
  (tags: statistics tesco strategy america maps london demographics fortiusone )

• Business Week | B-Schools Wary on Lehman, Merrill Impact
  "They're asking lots of questions, but we're telling them that New York may not be the best place to look right now. For those counting on investment banking, they are going to need to beef up their plan B."
  (tags: businessweek businesseducation markets economy understatement investmentbanking )

• I Believe in Advertising | Advertising Blog & Community » Tippex: Bride, One night stand, Mom
  "This campaign for Tippex, the all-powerful remover of error, poses the question “What if Tippex could work for every mistake we made?" – Remarkably disturbing.
  (tags: tippex advertising ibelieveinadvertising product )
• RANDOM RANTINGS | On the semantics of corporate blabla
  the most annoying discussion in management speak I find the long-standing debate on what are “capabilities” and what are “competencies”. Let me solve this debate for you: They are words!! And words mean what we say they mean. These things are not some objective reality, to be discovered through careful corporate archeology or so
  (tags: freekvermeulen jargon corporate )

• #273248 – Pastie
  "Actually, my degree in astrophysics has proved to be very valuable [..] Some things in this world are just hard. When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn, this is hard for me. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I have a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I must not be stupid."
  (tags: aaronhillegrass learning education psychology )

• Chris Morris: Massive bosons blew my unit | Science | The Guardian
  it is here that they really mug me with concepts. They try to soften the blow by claiming that physicists find it difficult to visualise extra dimensions too. That's easy to say when you're packing 26 of them.
  (tags: science physics theguardian cern largehadroncollider chrismorris )
• MAKE: Blog: Nintoaster – a Nintendo in a toaster
  It might be the red LEDs, yes – that's exactly it.
  (tags: computergames nintendo craft toaster make awesome )

• Make Marketing History: Perceptions Are Illogical.
  Why not just create a new equation. What they want to do is change the perception of Microsoft, so that's what they should focus on doing. The way to do that is not through advertising, but through actions and products that inevitably make customers feel that something has changed.
  (tags: microsoft marketing product publicrelations makemarketinghistory )
• Spies Like Us | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
  on September 22, the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency will officially launch a social networking site. The idea is that analysts at the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies will now be able to share information in an open way with each other (obviously behind a highly secure firewall) and that information will no longer be siloed within one organization.
  (tags: awesome government marketingprofs socialnetworking online america scottmonty spying )
• swissmiss: this elephant needs books…
  A lovely bookshelf. But too small! I want a to-scale elephant bookshelf.
  (tags: elephant bookshelf design swissmiss )
• Winner of the Personal Visualization Project is… | FlowingData
  "How about a look at a month of email spam? Almost as many words of spam as in War and Peace." Personal visualisation project.
  (tags: visualization information design data flowingdata personal graph visualisation awesome )
• Silicon Valley answers Bletchley Park's SOS with $100,000 donation – Times Online
  “A lot of the principal work by these guys is just as valid today.” Mr Dunkelberger said that the industry around the world needed to be aware of its heritage and to heed the “clarion call” to come to the aid of Bletchley.
  (tags: via:foe science fundraising thetimes bletchlypark alanturing silisonvalley computers )

• Neuromarketing » Small Favors, Big Success
  Our natural instinct in such situations is to avoid asking the individual we want to persuade for any favors other than the one that’s important to us. After all, the only thing worse than being asked for a favor is being asked for multiple favors, right? [however] Behavioral research shows us that sometimes asking for one favor first can greatly increase the probability of success with the second favor!
  (tags: neuroscience marketing neuromarketing persuasion )
• .: Barry's Farm :: 9-5 Laptop Sleeve :.
  A laptop sleeve that you can bring with you to corporate America. Be sure to talk about it by the water cooler.
  (tags: laptop design barrysfarm product )

In his dConstruct talk, Steven Johnson used Jane Jacobs’ phrase “the eyes on the street”. He was speaking about Outside.In, and the experience of being away from home, but of knowing what was going on in your area. His example was being on holiday, but of home not ceasing to exist, because you can see (or see evidence of) other people being there, talking about it, photographing it.

Of course, all this evidence takes the form of data, which made me think about the city as a metaphor for the data itself. There are areas where there are many eyes on the street – the populous areas that are mentioned on services like Outside.In, and the data we see and are asked for every day. But there are also the unseen areas – maybe shortcuts only a few people know, maybe places that aren’t a shortcut to anywhere you want to go, so you’d have no real reason to see them.

Except, there is a reason to see them. I grew up near Edinburgh, and early this decade quite a large part of the city caught fire. Main streets were inaccessible, and everyone had to find a new walk to work – probably one that involved tiny side streets that had never been intended to hold the volume of people that were using them. What had previously been seen only once or twice a day became a main thoroughfare and a new part of people’s map of the city.

In the same way that a lot of people found a city they thought they already know, I’m interested in what happens when we apply that idea to a dataset we think we already know – what are the limitations that force us to explore usefully? What are the weird, seemingly unimportant data that can join up the areas we already know, and how do we know where to look for it? In order to be truly useful eyes on the street, we need to be able to take the scenic route, or shortcuts, or any other route that will be fun or illuminating for us and the people we speak to.

• I Believe in Advertising | Advertising Blog & Community » Osram: Energy Saver
  The execution ensures that the consumer interacts with the message when a light is triggered by a sensor as they approach the bus stop – illuminating the shelter as well as the message, which reads: “Only use electricity when you need it”.
  (tags: ibelieveinadvertising advertising ambient outdoor energy green )
• Comparing Comparisons | iain tait | crackunit.com
  "All we need now is a bunch of different comparisons of comparison websites and we can compare them too." –my most hated advert of the moment.
  (tags: iaintait crackunit moneysupermarket comparision stats misleading )
• Kick It › Creating Products, Not Experiences
  “For a human being the product is not an end in itself but the gateway to a plethora of experiences.” It’s the plethora of experiences that is so important. Design for a single experience (or a single user type) is limiting and can even be crippling for a product.
  (tags: experience design dansaffer kicker product consumer )