When the definitive guide to post-punk music is written, X probably won't get the credit they deserve. And that's a shame, given songs like this. Wilco, The Bodeans and the Gin Blossoms reaped their success from the seeds that X planted.
Hard to believe something this funky coud come from two members of Duran Duran. Shows you what a good drummer can do.
Ok, one more. Before he switched to sappy, run-of-the-mill pop songs in the 80's, Stevie Wonder could bring it.
Around 20 high-ranking executives at corporations such as Subaru of America, DHL, Citigroup and Northwest Airlines will get a surprise when Fortune magazine arrives on their desks this week. Each will find his or her own face gracing the cover.
The covers are one-of-a-kind mock-ups wrapping the actual Fortune edition, part of an advertising play conducted by information-technology company Unisys that brings new meaning to the idea of niche marketing. Unisys is sending the magazines to get the attention of executives -- mostly chief information officers -- responsible for making buying decisions about their companies' technology products and services. In other words, the people Unisys most wants to influence.
If an executive flips over the mock Fortune cover, he or she will discover a letter -- also individually tailored -- from a senior Unisys manager describing challenges in the target's specific industry. The Fortune "cover wraps" also offer personalized Web addresses, where the executives can find mock news videos that mention their names and tell how they achieved business success. To reinforce the message, Unisys is placing billboards and outdoor signs -- albeit without information-chief portraits -- close to the executives' offices. Some ads will even appear on video screens in the elevators of their office buildings.
And yes, I am looking forward to it. A lot. They've got some interesting sites there with a great mixture of loyalty programs, online communities and effective branding that will present some fascinating challenges. It's going to be a lot of fun and a lot of work, and I think I'll enjoy almost every minute of it.
We'll see. But this is the first interesting feature in the MP3 player market in a looong time.
"Our CrunchGear rumorists have discovered that when you share a song via Wi-Fi using Zune’s three day/three play system AND the other party purchases the song later in the iZunes Music Store (IZMS), you get a credit that you can later trade in for music and media."
Getting the old site visible on search engines was a challenge; between the frames and the photo-heavy pages, I was darn near invisible on all the major search sites. And Don re-designing his site was the final kick in the pants I needed to get on it after 4 years without any major changes.
About time, too. What's the old saying about the cobbler's children are always barefoot?...
Looking at the features and prices for today's point-and-shoot digital cameras, it seems all the manufacturers are locked into a megapixel war, much like the PC world was in a processor speed war 5 years ago.
Does this emphasis on one feature result in better pictures? Probably not. No amount of bells and whistles is going to compensate for a camera you can't easily use or is too big to take with you. Consumers today are used to iPod nanos and Motorola RAZR's: The days of bulky "portable" electronics are long-gone. Camera manufacturers need to stop thinking that this was the be-all and end-all of consumer cameras and start making the digital equivalent of the Olympus XA or Minox GL, else consumers will be soon looking to the ever-better pitures that smartphones are churning out, and rely on them as their primary camera of choice.
This has nothing to do with marketing, photography, design, etc, and is only marginally Mac-related: It could work with an equivalent script on a Windows laptop.
Rumours abound that the next version of OSX will have portable user accounts, allowing someone to box up their home directory on an iPod or flash drive and take it from machine to machine. The fact remains, however, that your applications are stuck on one machine in a folder than all the users can access.
One of the reasons why I got out of the photo biz was I could see the changes that companies like PhotoDisc were wreaking on the business of being a photographer, and it's only gotten worse with sites like iStockphoto and Stock.xchng.
And it was only a matter of time until it hit direct marketing, too. Thanks to Don, I found Premium Postcard, run by the US Post Office. Now anyone can run their own direct mail campaign, right from their computer. Welcome to the world of a billion and one marketing pros.
"When we put this machine online it was, on average, hit by a potential security assault every 15 minutes. None of these attacks were solicited, merely putting the machine online was enough to attract them. The fastest an attack struck was mere seconds and it was never longer than 15 minutes before the honeypot (computer - ed.) logged an attempt to subvert it."
Look, I love shopping at a good record shop as much or more as the next person, and think the limited selection that Wal-Mart and Barnes and Nobles offers is ridiculous. But the fact is, the act of shopping for music is fun for very few people, and for them, they're always shops like Zia's. I can't remember the last time I bought a CD from a physical record shop, it's always been either Amazon.com, iTunes or, um, other methods for years with me.
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