Over 100M Downloads for Skype

As of today Skype has been downloaded 116,528,662 times. In April Forbes announced it was reaching 100m mark.

Positioning is dead

In my post We Now Sell Milk! I stated that Shoppers Drug Mart is now selling milk. Fusion Brand is talking about the death of positioning where a company no longer wants to know as the "leading provider of..." Companies who begin to realize the needs and time constraints of consumers will be rewarded by them. For instance a mother might make a trip to Shoppers Drug Mart for cosmetics etc., but also needs milk for the family and loves the idea of not having to go to the grocery store and waste time/gas(check the prices lately).

The signs of "positioning's" demise are everywhere. The number of branding failures, many based on "positioning," exceeds 90%, according to the consultancies Ernst & Young and McKinsey & Co. McDonald's, the premier mass market branding giant, announced that it has abandoned positioning. Says Larry Light, McDonald's chief global marketing officer: "Identifying one brand position, communicating it in a repetitive manner is old-fashioned, out of date, out of touch." Even more bluntly, Light highlights "the end of brand positioning as we know it," calling it "marketing suicide." Even a top executive at advertising giant Leo Burnett is willing to stand before his CEO peers and admit, "the old ways of marketing are not working any more."

Milk: Pus with Hormones

I have been doing some reading at NotMilk and don't like alot of the things I read. Living in Canada I know one thing that our government rejected rbGH hormone. If I lived in the USA I would not touch any type of dairy product since its okay to use rbGH hormone there. But there are many other reasons against milk and you can read about them and decided. One product which I have been drinking more of is soy milk, there is even ice cream.

Mobile phone ring tone becomes hit single in Britain

Story via Smart Mobs

"The tune is called "Crazy Frog Axel F." And one music retailer says it's outselling the new single by the band Coldplay by nearly four to one."

Japanese Manhole Covers, WOW

Link from Boing Boing

'Gender-bending' chemicals found to 'feminise' boys

New Scientist has a story about phthalates in plastics, which mimick the female hormone oestrogen can disrupt the development of baby boys. Wow, isn't this just great news. How about an ad campaign "Plastic it's good for you, lady"

Eiffel Tarp Tower

A tarp, hiding some construction work on the Piazza San Marco, found at flickr

We Now Sell Milk!

Those were the words on a 8.5" by 11" yellow piece of paper tapped along the windows at a Shoppers Drug Mart on Yonge St. There was a time when you would mention the name of a retailer and there was a clear idea of what they were. Grocery store or hardware store or electronics store. The lines have blurred and retailers now want to be everything to everyone. Why drive or walk around to four different stores when you can have it all in one store. Lets hold them hostage! In essence they now have all become the same one store.

I predict that sometime soon you will be able to pick-up lunch and dinner at Shoppers Drug Mart. Actually it would make more sense if I could get a hair cut a Shoppers Drug Mart but that would make too much sense.

What Every Good Marketer Knows

Seth Godin's What Every Good Marketer Knows. Print this out and stick it in front of you at all times, okay except when eating, sleeping, driving and going to the washroom. Link from brand autopsy.

Podcasting Flickr hybrid

A great idea from the podchef combining a podcast with flickr. Why not use just a video? Bandwidth, no everyone has it. Another idea is to use this for online instructions on how to assemble furniture etc.

Online bookmarks: del.cio.us

If you don't use del.cio.us and want more information check out this user guide.

Holistic Thinking

Holistic thinking in design and business to me is one of the most important factors for success. Great essay by Scott Berkun about What they didn't teach me.

"Most holistic designers I’ve met come from Industrial design programs (or have no formal design training at all), since unlike graphic design, ID programs require considerations for modeling, engineering and thoughts of production: things that require the acknowledgement of a larger process beyond the pure aesthetics and quality of the design."

How oil is changing the world

The Globe and Mail has a seven day series about what awaits the world with the decline and fall in oil production.

Chinese oil consumption has nearly quadrupled since 1980 to 5.7 billion barrels a day. It is expected to double again by 2025. And the Chinese are only just discovering their own Route 66. By 2030, China will have more cars on the road than the United States, putting a call on the world's scarce supplies.

"There will be a moment of awakening for the North American consumer — a realization that it is not entitled to stand first in line to quench its thirst for oil before everyone else gets a shot."

Target, Design and Liars

Last week Dominion Bond Rating Service dropped the credit ratings on Hudson's Bay Co. another notch and it said the outlook remains negative. One of the problems I have always believed is that they are not design focused. A retail store is a stage, a show which is art directed.
One retailer which seems to have grasped this is Target. I can only tell you what I read since we have no Target stores in Canada. According to True Talk's Tom, Target really has a small portion of items which are well designed or distinctive. They have feed us the story or lie as Seth Godin states but people are willing to believe it.

Water Sommelier

Manhattan's Ritz-Carlton and Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel all have a "water sommelier". This is just a good indication that there is too much money floating around. Someone should be tracking the sales of water at these places...good economic indicator?

Some of the waters such as Voss from Norway are favored by Madonna and Bono. One of the more expensive brands is Bandoit from France. Can't decide what to have with dinner, check out fine waters.

Open Source Software Goodies

Here are some leading open source software packages

The Gimp - www.gimp.org - free image manipulation program, Photoshop clone

Open Office - www.openoffice.org - free office suite, who needs Microsoft

Audacity- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/- recording and editing sounds for podcasting, you need to download the Lame MP3 encoder to export files.

TiddlyWiki - http://shared.snapgrid.com/gtd_tiddlywiki.html - a wiki for getting things done which you can also save on a USB Key with a portable version of Firefox. How to use TiddlyWiki.

Open Workbench - www.openworkbench.org/ - alternative to Microsoft Project

Sociopaths

This evening I was watching the Discovery Channel and they interviewed Dr. Stout author of The Sociopath Next Door. Well guess what? I worked at one time for a sociopath and didn't even know that's what you called individuals like this. I could never understand this person and had never met a human being like this guy, I was constantly bewildered. But after listening to Dr. Stout and doing some searches it all makes sense now. Everyone who I worked with had the same consensus that he enjoyed belittling and picking away at you because he just enjoyed it.

"It's easy to see what they are after when they lie and manipulate for money or material goods or power. But in many instances, such as love relationships or faked friendships, it is not so easy to see what the psychopath is after. Without wandering too far afield into spiritual speculations - a problem Cleckley also faced - we can only say that it seems to be that the psychopath ENJOYS making others suffer."

Dmail Email now Gmail

I checked my gmail account and discovered I have been given 50 gmail invites. If you want a gmail invite send me an email.

Dmail is door mail or snail mail.

Solar Hybrid

When will we see a solar hybrid car. All these solar car races have been going on for years without any real world application. Somebody call Toyota.

Divergent opinions rule

A carpenter sees every problem as a nail is the saying. When your team is made up of individuals with all the same background there are very few different perspectives offered. Diversity is the solution and hire different.

"NASA employees today are far more likely to have come to the agency directly out of graduate school, which means they are also far less likely to have divergent opinions. That matters because, in small groups, diversity of opinion is the single best guarantee that the group will reap benefits from face-to-face discussion."

Puick LaGrosse

2005 Buick LaCrosse

General Motors seems to be having problems, wonder why. Where is the excitement, who's buying this stuff?

Word of Mouth Study

"As consumers become more impervious to traditional marketing tactics, companies are increasingly turning to word-of-mouth (WOM) campaigns to engineer conversations--or buzz--among customers. Researchers at the Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School have conducted the first study that examines the effectiveness of firm-sponsored WOM with a surprising result: consumers with no loyalty to the firm or product create more powerful WOM than loyal customers."

Wired 40

"They're masters of technology and innovation. They're global thinkers driven by strategic vision. They're nimbler than Martha Stewart's PR team. They're The Wired 40."