Is it premature to call it?
Audi’s “Game day” commercial about vampires dying in the bright headlights is just brilliant.
All around great spot. They even included a #hashtag at the end: #solongvampires to encourage social conversation beyond the 30 sec. spot.
While you’re on Youtube, check out the Audi brand channel. Youtube is creating really nice brand pages – looks really tight.
Now to complete your adventure, check out the new Audi allroad… man, what a beautiful car. Me wants it!
Twitter started using real names on their website instead of just the famous @twitter handles. Hadn’t noticed that before.
Sure, the @handle and the icon are still there for each post, but along with it is now the real name, or the name that the person chose to create the account in bolded font. Interesting move, I say. It makes the homepage and my feed have a completely different feel. Of course the update has not pushed down to the apps yet. Otherwise I perhaps would’ve seen it sooner.
With Twitter growing more and more into the most important and dominant communication platform it will be interesting to see how Twitter chooses to keep the balance between the need to monetize their service and keeping the all important credibility with the people that matter, the movers and shakers, and increasingly not just tech leaders, but leaders all over the world in every genre and position.
A startup that shall not be named receives tons of VC cash from a prominent Silicon Valley fund YCombinator and is “giving back’ to the business community by ripping off every design in the book. Not just inspired copying, but directly stealing, even serving images from the affected businesses’ server.
Neither Techncrunch or PandoDaily have picked that story up as of yet. Are they sleeping or looking away since those tech sites increasingly are not independent journalism outlets, but venture funded startups themselves?
“Pivot“, make a drastic change in your business can be a great thing. At Einmaleins I went from selling housewares and kitchen items, a full-on retail store to a media business, designing websites, offering an ad network and setting up a co-working space.
Had a chance to give some comments in the Business Examiner on the impact of the legislature coming to town:
(the full article is behind a paywall)
“Over the last four years I haven’t seen any difference in business, legislature here or not,” said owner Mathias Eichler. “Other businesses might have different experiences — certainly restaurants, I would assume. But from my angle, it’s a non-event.” He also said that “the Hill” and downtown Olympia are separate entities. “There is hardly any connection or cross-pollination from what I experienced,” Eichler said. “People come in (to downtown) to do business — they come for a cause. They might use the catering services here or the restaurants around us, but that’s about it.”
File that under “Someone has to burst the bubble”.
The surviving Monty Python members are set to reunite for new movie.
Amazing!
Der Spiegel highlights what’s important:
That may make for good TV, but it’s the voters who pay. CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer tried to heighten the drama by asking absurd questions about US colonies on the moon, Swiss bank accounts, and Puerto Rican statehood, not to mention which of the four candidates’ wives would make the best first lady.
There is no excuse for why I like that movie, other then the fact that my brother Markus watched it like a million times and so I fell in love with it too.
Well, now I REALLY would like to see it again… internet, internet, can you help me out here?
Bill Gates labelled capitalism phenomenal system:
“We’re going through a tough period, but there is no other system that has improved humanity.
It’s really — honestly — surprising that Hollywood doesn’t understand such a simple concept.
I don’t even know what a ‘new release’ is anymore, I just wait until it hits Netflix Instant. If it’s not on there, it doesn’t exist.
On a 1959 visit to Germany, World’s Fair Commission chairman Eddie Carlson saw Stuttgart’s concrete Fernsehturm tower and imagined one for Seattle. His napkin sketch of such a steeple—a doodle he recreated in the 1980s—was the basis for the Space Needle design.
Tina on CreativeMornings:
Fostering local community. Make people get out of their office to actually meet up.
So it was a big blow to Apple when Ron left after 11 stellar years. And it was a big wow for JCPenney when Ron signed on as their new CEO.
The guy who created the fabulous Apple stores is now the CEO of JCPenny’s. Watch him turn this company around.
Summer Games in Baku, Azerbaijan; Doha, Qatar; Istanbul, Turkey; Madrid, Spain; Rome, Italy; and Tokyo, Japan.
Where do you want to see the Games go next?
Alcatel-Lucent’s CEO Ben Verwaayen at Davos:
The culprit in today’s version of capitalism isn’t greedy corporations, he said. It’s decision-makers (or rather, non-decision-makers) in government. Western governments have waffled on solving their debt problems and put forth long lists of competing regulations to rein in corporations, which only serve to confuse and disable the economy’s job creators.
It’s funny that business leaders, largely driving, responsible for and benefitting from capitalism blame government for the failures of the past decade.
If you don’t take control of the issues yourself and blame someone else, they will find a solution to fix the problem and it might not be what you want to see. What are you going to do then? Lobby more?
Be good at putting family first.
Here is a question I’ve been tossing around since last week. Someone, and I don’t remember who, talked about the upcoming iPad3 release and how Apple will have to offer some software improvement to justify the hardware changes i.E. higher res. screen.
But, here is what I want, and think Apple needs to tackle in the near future. Apple has their online store, which is currently just for physical products. The Mac App Store for apps on the Mac. The iTunes store for media and apps on the iPad/iPhone. This is starting to get quite confusing. Yes, no need to change anything just you look at the last quarter’s numbers, but I am getting confused on where to find what and one point of entry would make this all very seamless… perhaps?
MG Siegler on Techcrunch:
Apple’s revenues, while massive, are nothing compared to a company like Walmart, which reported $109.5 billion in revenue last quarter. BUT that $109.5 billion only turned into $3.3 billion of actual income for the quarter. In other words, Walmart has more than double the revenues of Apple, but Apple has more than four times the profits of Walmart. That’s remarkable.
This is what I am talking about, when I say that Apple’s success is changing the way people will approach business from now on in the future. Apple is changing not just computing, technology or communication. Apple is changing capitalism in itself. How you can be successful in business. This is fascinating at it’s core.
I’m back with another glorious episode of ‘Don’t Watch This’. In it I talk about power outages and powerful people in Davos. Sponsored by the delicious Eastside Big Tom.
In case someone wants to nominate me. This is the link to the nomination for “Young Global Leaders”. Thank you in advance!