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Three Best Things 4/26/10 - 5/2/10

Posted by Jason on Sun, 05/02/2010 - 10:22pm

Thing: The Revenge of the Brands: How corporate America turned Naomi Klein’s anti-branding manifesto on its head from Reason. Intended as an anti-marketing call-to-arms, Naomi Klein’s No Logo has actually wound up as the blueprint for modern branding. When corporations are tripping over themselves to seem as uncorporate as possible, what’s left to subvert, anyway? Reason argues that, for Klein, “Writing about branding was only an excuse to talk about politics,” which explains her present lack of satisfaction at seeing corporate America playing by her rules. ELSEWHERE IN BRANDING: Ice Cube on co-opting the Los Angeles Raiders brand by force in the early ’90s.

Thing: Riders on the Storm by the New York Times. David Brooks, fresh off a 15-minute break spent dumping on Sandra Bullock for being the victim of infidelity, gets back to work by linking to some studies that declare internet users to be surprisingly open-minded clickers. “People who spend time on the most liberal sites are more likely to go to foxnews.com than average Internet users,” and vice versa. Sure, most of that cross-traffic can be chalked up to troll exchanges, but it’s reassuring to think more and more people might be finding common ground every day simply by being adventurous surfers. ELSEWHERE IN VIEWPOINTS: Design for the First World, a new blog that flips the “Design will save the world” notion — the idea that well-meaning while perhaps patronizing designers can solve developing-world problems just by being great designers who care really hard. DFTFW is soliciting solutions from developing-nation designers for first-world problems like obesity or having nothing to whine to Twitter about.

THING: Super Mario Bros Crossover via Rock Paper Shotgun. You can play through Super Mario Bros, warps and all, as Mega Man, Link, Metroid person, Castlevania man, or Contra guy. This is all you need to know. ELSEWHERE IN RETRO: The Industrialization of Traffic: Why Bicycles Are Faster Than Cars by No Tech Magazine.

BONUS!

You’ve seen parkour videos before, and some of them were ok, but none of them were as good as this one is:

Apparently Stones Are for Drinking Now [Three Best Things 4/19/10 - 4/25/10]

Posted by Jason on Sun, 04/25/2010 - 11:43pm

Thing: Don’t throw that out! Editing like it’s paper destroys journalistic value by Jonathan Stray.

Thing: What’s in a Nickname? In Spirits World, an Implied Relationship by Ad Age. Coke. Jack (and Coke). VW Bug. Mickey D’s. Keys to the Beemer. The Big Apple, ATL, what happens in Vegas. A Louis bag and a pair of Chucks. Some brands have earned nicknames from their patrons the old-fashioned way, but the new marketing thing is to try and force nicknames on people, like this is first grade recess and Brand X is telling us we have to call it Musclebutt The Impossible because it climbed up the slide backwards woooooooo.

Corporations have successfully incorporated nicknames before, but only after the nicknames arose organically. Federal Express wouldn’t have changed its name to FedEx if everyone hadn’t already been calling it FedEx for years. Same story with the former Kentucky Fried Chicken. America Online. The obvious difference between these and Keystone Light trying to get you to call it Stones is FedEx and KFC and AOL didn’t force the change, as if they’re Brand Jœhanndreus X deciding to go by its middle name during its sophomore year because college girls seem to like weird names.

Who knows; maybe it’ll work. Seems more like they’re trying to fit in with Sam, the Captain, Heiny, Jager, Bud, Maker’s, PBR, Henny, and Natty. Also we’ve decided we want you guys to start calling us Eng.

Thing: As Australian comedy trio Axis of Awesome demonstrates, all you need to do to write a hit song is use the four-chord progression that’s used in every other hit song. Or just about. Medley us: [NSFW: Three cusses.]

Bonus Bonus Bonus

What Graffiti Will Look Like in 100 Years [Three Best Things 3/8/10 - 3/14/10]

Posted by Jason on Sun, 03/14/2010 - 8:45pm

QUICK LIST THIS WEEK BUSY BUSY BUSY

  • Thing: Attention Is the Real Resource by John Gruber. Should publishers offer full posts or teasers in their RSS feeds? Somehow it’s still up for debate. Our stance is that “Click for more after the jump” sounds the same as “Goodbye” to most readers. Gruber: “A reader asking for a full-content RSS feed is a reader who wants to pay more attention to what you publish. There have to be ways to thrive financially from that.”
  • Thing: What May Happen in the Next 100 Years by Ladies’ Home Journal, 1900. Someone dug up a IN THE YEAR 2000 list of predictions that’s… actually really close to right, from the Internet to air travel to agricultural genetic engineering. (Not the intricacies of each, of course, but the effects. Also I would link to the blog this came from, but that blog’s been removed by Blogger for SPAMMIN’.)
  • Thing: REVERSE GRAFFITI: South African Artists Tag Walls By Scrubbing Them Clean by Inhabitat. Self-explanatory:


Via Inhabitat

Unrelated Video: Spring Is Pretty Much Here, Tusas

In honor of another winter’s passing, it’s time to pay respects to all those who tried to have a phone conversation on a frozen lake and kept getting corralled by stunt bikers. Take it away, Tusas on ice:

The Shoddy Aughties: Best of the Decade's Worst Lists

Posted by Jason on Mon, 12/28/2009 - 4:52pm

Heads up, friends: This post is part of ENGINE’s decade-closing blogsplosion. Click here to witness the rest of the damage. The aughties!

It’s time for the exhaustive list of the Worst _____ of the Decade lists.

Y2KWe try to be positive. But come on. When Pew concludes it was the worst decade in 50 years, and Time drops the 10 Worst Things about the Worst Decade Ever, it’s hard to forget this decade kicked off with Y2K — not just a fail fail, but the biggest fail fail ever — and has only gotten more and more bailouty and wardrobe malfunctionous since.

Would love to list nice things; just filling a void here. Kottke’s already got the best lists list covered. It has some worsts too, but isn’t nearly as horrific as what you’re about to endure Also, Fimoculous has the 2009 list of lists up and running — perfect for those getting the shakes at staring down the barrel of all ten years at once.

Our next entry in our series will be as pleasant as can be. But it’s darkest before the dawn. Wade into the shock and awful.

Worst 2000s Lists

Worst Ads, Branding & Marketing


Via 10 Worst Green Brand Names by Fast Company

Worst Books, Magazines, & Newspapers


Via 30 Worst Women’s Magazine Covers by BuzzFeed

Worst in Business


Via 15 Biggest PR Disasters by Business Insider

Worst Cars


Via 10 Worst Cars by Jalopnik

Worst Celebrities


Via 10 Worst WWE Heavyweight Champions by Bleacher Report

Worst Computers & Web Stuff


Allegedly a website, via 10 Ugliest Websites by WXYZ.com

Worst Design


Via 12 Worst Web Design Trends by Web Hosting Help Guy

Worst Fashion


Via 10 Worst Hair Trends by the Frisky

Worst Food & Drink


Featured in 10 Worst Fast Food Meals by Time. Image via flickr

Worst … General


Featured in 11 Worst Ideas by the Washington Post

Worst in Money


Featured in 10 Worst Athletes to Ask for Financial Advice by Real Clear Sports

Worst Movies & Theater


Via 10 Worst Hindi Movies by Greatbong

Worst Music


Via 25 Worst Album Covers (NSFW) by Gunaxin Media [Somehow, the nuclear reactors make less sense than the pigs that are immune to pig flu.]

Worst in Politics


Via 12 Most Shocking Sex Scandals by the Huffington Post

Worst Products


Via 10 Worst Tech Products by CNET

Worst Science & Tech


Featured in 10 Worst Moments in Science by Smithsonian Magazine

Worst in Sports


Via The Decade’s Worst NASCAR Paint Schemes by Fanhouse

Worst TV


Featured in 10 Worst TV Shows by Complex

Worst Videogames


Via 10 Worst Games by GameWad

That’s it! You survived the worst decade since the 1360s.

That wasn’t so bad after all!

Got more? Send them my way.

On ReadWriteWeb's Elitist Twitter-snobbery

Posted by Jason on Sat, 04/11/2009 - 11:10am

From the typically sensible ReadWriteWeb comes How to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who’s Buying. RWW’s arms are aflutter over Magpie, a service that lets advertisers buy twitters from ordinary Twitter users. Sounds like a truly diabolical voluntary service, huh?

AFAICT, here are the primary dings against Magpie and its advertisers:

  • It’s still about a decade too soon to start reviving bling bling.
  • Seeing ads from friends would be kind of annoying, but you could make fun of them for it, so maybe this is a win-win.
  • The thing where you type in your Twitter name to see how much $ you could make doesn’t work on any of our computers.

But these are not the beefs which RWW smells cooking. No. It’s unclear exactly what the problem is, but it seems to be something about the sanctity and purity of Twitter being corrupted by global military-industrial conglomerates like StubHub.com. We may have not noticed, but there’s been cheese and spam on Twitter since about day two… just because everyday tweetists want a crack at a (likely) tiny cut is nothing to get worked up about.

RWW goes so far as to slam a specific user named @highandnoble, suggesting said person is not quite so. All for her tweet about liking Skype. Remind me never to suggest in public that I like Skype.

Check the semantics… these Twitter users aren’t being paid, they’re being “paid off.” Note to self: selling ads = Mafia work. If selling tweets means selling souls, does that mean unpublished tweets are in limbo? Is writing an @tweet akin to missionary work? Retweeting must equal demonic possession or vampirism or something. This blog post raises many intense twittological issues. Anyway…

So we’re shockedx2 about microbloggers selling microblog posts. But what to make of this? Yep, that right there is ReadWriteWeb selling blog posts. Sure, we can say, oh, well, they have all sorts of journalistic spoiler alerts there that warn us we’re being advertised to, and Magpie doesn’t do that. We can say that. We can say lots of things.

Pay no heed to the many “Sponsors” in ReadWriteWeb’s right sidebar. Nevermind that their ad section is about thrice as big as the one on @highandnoble’s website.

Takeaway: selling ad space is perfectly acceptable… but only if you’re already a big, big blog.

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