innovativeedge

I'm working on a new portfolio website. It will be up soon! Check it -->

This is an ad that was recently run by Hummer in National Geographic and it is terrible.

At the bottom, the ad details some amazing, secret, and secluded singletrack.

MTBR posted this in their blog along with a story about the author who actually went to search out this secret trail using the rough directions outlined in the ad.



Unfortunately, Hummer really dropped the ball on this one. There is no trail. The directions and picture were a complete FAKE! They missed out on a great opportunity to interact with their customers. They could have put directions to a real secret trail, or better yet, since there aren't really too many secret trials, they could have built their own trail! This could have been an extremely powerful way to connect with mountain bikers who could be potential customers!

If the trail was real, can you imagine the amount of buzz and press they would have gotten through online bike communities, bloggers, and big manufacturers?

They could have posted clues, made it a bit of a scavenger hunt to take pictures, interact with a website, and get some amazing exposure for their brand, but no. It was a complete farce.

Sorry Hummer, but until you start making cars that don't kill the planet - or at least create a marketing campaign to be competent in this new world of creative media - I've got to say; Hummer Sucks.

Here's a link to the MTBR article. Interesting story and lots of great pictures! I just feel bad that the guy wasn't pleasantly surprised by some rad renegade Hummer singletrack!

http://reviews.mtbr.com/blog/welcome-to-the-open-%E2%80%A6-a-myth-by-general-motors-exposed/

I've been doing a little bit of thinking about how to spread the popularity of BePositive....

My first thought was that which Amanda, Brandon, and I had talked about a few weeks ago. Make a BePositive Facebook Group.

My second thought was: how could we collaborate with another group, band, etc. in way that would benefit both parties?

In order to do that, we'd first need another party. Brandon and I have talked about having a party or partnering with a band to do a show, but with our lack or nonexistence of funding at the moment, this is not likely to happen.

My next thought came when I created the BePositive Facebook group. In the little "Related Groups" box were our friends at Untitled and Unbridled.



Chase Misenheimer and Alex Crawford chat it up and play weekly selections of new indie music off of upcoming records, shows, and listeners requests. They really put on a worthwhile show.

You can subscribe to their podcast on iTunes, check out their Blog, MySpace, or join their Facebook Group.

At present, this is as far as my idea spans. Collaborate in some way with UandU to either just plug each other in some way or hopefully come up with something creative. We'll have to pow-wow on it.

Update: Just got word that my article was quoted on Culture Bully.

Check it -->
http://www.culturebully.com/the-hub-wednesday-november-12-2008

Last night I did my first review of O'Death at 7th St. Entry for the Minneapolis, MN music blog Perfect Porridge.

Check it out after the jump



http://www.perfectporridge.com/2008/11/11/odeath-drakkar-sauna-and-lucy-michelle-the-velvet-lapelles-7th-st-entry-minneapolis-mn-november-10th-2008/

In process towards my end presentation for my Progress & Innovation class I've been sketching some more ideas about Mozilla.

This first one is all about the current browser war and their progress towards the imminent "Web 3.0" like the world of Aurora and other next-gen internet internet ideas.

Internet Exploder is a bit behind and is due for some catch-up work. I doubt they'll be the next one to step up the bar. Safari is right up there and current, but browsers like Firefox, Flock, and Cruz have stepped it up in terms add-ons, features, and specialization. Chrome seems to have the best grip on the future with it's application integration and movement away from the static OS desktop. In addition, Apple has started to move into the new world of mobile phone applications with its App Store, which has opened up a lot of new opportunities for social and online marketing, but Google is not far behind with Android. Hopefully someone will open up a new paradigm of interconnected PC and mobile browsing and communication.



Here I've got some ideas about how pieces of this project will be fitting into my final presentation and how I can incorporate visual and physical elements.

This is what I'm thinking so far:

First will be a visual explanation of Mozilla's history and some basics on their innovation structure including the visualization that I posted a few weeks ago.

Second will be an activity where I present a mock project or idea under an Open Source Creative Commons License. It will be pretty bare bones, like a spaceship with no gadgets or a monster that has no eyes, tentacles, or scary features. Next, I will create a scenario for the monster or space ship. Some sort of adventure that will include some sort of obstacle that will require the monster or spaceship to have additional features to completely. Then, I will ask the class to make a quick drawing of some things that they would add to the monster or spaceship to improve it's performance in it's task. Finally, the additions that the class draws up will be added to the monster or spaceship and we can talk about how everyone contributed to the development of the monster or spaceship just like a Mozilla development community would contribute to Firefox or other Mozilla Labs projects.

In the last segment of my presentation, I will segue from the development of Mozilla Labs projects, into my ideas on any new innovations that Mozilla may introduce in the future. I have more to think on this, but I would like to come up with some sort of prototype or demo of my idea.



To summarize for class. So far I've included all of these element that we have studied in previous weeks:

Ideation
Sketching
Mapping
Storytelling
Group Activity
Play
Prototyping

So there you have it! More to come this week!

This just in. Senator John McCain, in a last ditch effort to gain some ground in the polls, has announced that if he is elected the next President of the United States, he will sponsor a free burrito day at Chipotle on Wednesday!



P.S.

If you want to design your own Chipotle burrito, go to the Burrito Generator!

My Chipotle Burrito:

Chipotle Fan.com

Pepsi has released new packaging designs for their cans, bottles, etc. What can I say, they are less than exciting. The Mountain Dew bottle looks amazing, but the Pepsi bottles are quite uneventful. They are clean, yet that font just looks like Geo Sans Light or Lane Narrow...



Not to mention: the little Pepsi orb just looks like a comic word blurb or a goofy sail boat... or if you scroll down in the comments here you will see how goofy they've been with the MLB, NBA, and many others...

Tsk tsk Pepsi! What were you thinking!?